Tap the Red Cane Whirlwind is a collection of solo live performances from engagements at McCabe's, Santa Monica, California and Freight and Salvage, Berkeley, California in 2004.

In an interview regarding his first live release, Phelps said, "My passion lies in performing live, in the sense of 'no net' string grabbing and 'lord knows what' singing and flying by my seat and watching the songs come alive (hopefully) in a way that I could have never predicted beforehand. I've wanted to have a recorded representation of that for some time..."

Music critic Thom Jurek praised the release in his Allmusic review, writing "Phelps is a dynamite guitarist who adds, subtracts, and morphs figures onto the original fingerstyle lines, and uses his voice to offer evidence of the timelessness of the lyric. And as moving and virtuosic as these two performances are, it's his own songs that offer the true prize of this collection... if there is one recording that captures the sum of the magic, power, and poetry that is Kelly Joe Phelps, this one's it.