It's a measure of the awe in which Joe Burke is held by his peers that they'll cheerfully pay to hear him play - and to play with him.

That's what happened when Cathal McConnell, always on the look-out for a gig to go to when the Boys of the Lough are ''resting'', turned up, bought his ticket, and was rewarded for several typically helpful(ish) interjections from the floor by being invited to get his seldom-far-from-hand flute out for a tune.

And what a tune, or three. Hearing McConnell fall in with Burke's lickety-spit button accordion playing as if they'd been parted at birth was a collector's item of a finale to an evening of already special music making and, being an evening with Burke, much mirth.

Burke's playing, hugely expressive and ever faithful to a tune's dance origins, even at improbable speeds, speaks of long years spent soaking up Ireland's music, lore, legend, and doubtless a drop of its liquid produce, too. Slow airs he ''knew before he learned them'' flow with grace and richness, and hornpipes ''so difficult they shouldn't be played at all'' find him effortlessly rattling through knuckle- knotting fingering with a look of playful inconvenience.

He's a grand storyteller, too, preceding a lovely French waltz with recollections of Parisian revelry that almost induced a sympathetic hangover. And when his wife, Ann Conroy Burke, drops her simple but supportive guitar work for their button box duet/duel, the sound of two expert accordionists in contrasting concert - he oaken, she slightly brassy - should be enough to entice music lovers to their gigs in Bellshill (tonight), Kirkcaldy (tomorrow), Glasgow (Sunday) and Aberdeen (Monday).