Another good experience at the Cambridge Folk Festival
After a productive week’s holiday up in the Highlands of Scotland, researching some new songs and writing a follow up song to Only For Three Months (one which tells of the eventual reunion of son and mother), Rob and I were off to play at the Club Tent at Cambridge Folk Festival.
Many thanks are due to Patti and Roger for according us the honour of being one of the acts to represent the St Neot's Folk Club, and it was excellent to meet up with club members again.
A few words about translation
As we have noted elsewhere on this web-site, a large part of na-mara’s ‘project’ in recent times has been the development of a repertoire that draws from the song and tune traditions of France, northern Spain and, more recently, Quebec, which we have sought, through translation, to make more available to English speaking audiences for whom much of the material may be new and unknown.
The Letchworth Festival, 11th July
Thanks to Al Hewson for arranging for us to play a half hour set at an open air event in Howard's Park to conclude The Letchworth Festival.
Al did an excellent opener, representing the Baldock and Letchworth Folk Club, and we followed on with half an hour of our more upbeat material. A decent audience turned up - even though many were there to see their friends and children performing some jazzy dance routines.
Many times in a Blue Moon (various)
The final push is on! 20-21st June and 3rd and 4th July, Rob and I were in the studio getting The Bite completed. This involved a little re-recording, much knob twiddling and daylight deprivation. And we are pleased to say that, through the sterling efforts of Mark Lee at Blue Moon studios in Bodicote, , we are now there! We have rough masters for all 11 tracks. They are:
Nellie Torrence and Jeannie Waldie
The Bite
Flower of Magherally
Danza La Carina, Danza Prima and El Falton d’Arriba
The Bloody Inn
Billy Don't You Weep for Me
Entemediu, Muneira de Carcarosa
The Child Mother
In Concert at the St Albans Folk Festival 17th June 2010
na-mara had the honour of being ‘In Concert’ at the St Albans Folk Festival this year - with notices in the official programme and everything! For this, we have the wonderful Jan Strapp ,who runs the Redbourn Folk Club, to thank. Jan was kind enough to book us for a full gig some time ago and it was a very pleasant surprise to find out that this was to form part of the Festival.
Playing with Chris Leslie of Fairport at Blue Moon Studios 15th June 2010
Because of his extremely busy musical timetable, it has taken a long long time to occur, but we were finally able to work with virtuoso multi-instrumentalist Chris Leslie from Fairport Convention at Blue Moon studios on 15th June. Mark Lee, our sound engineer at Blue Moon suggested some months ago that we should approach Chris and see if he would be willing to do some over-tracking for us and we have been very excited ever since he agreed to do so.
Curry, Beer and Rightback Records 14th June 2010
The new album is really taking shape and, as such, there was need for the ‘cabinet of all the talents’ to meet and plan the way forward; especially so because Derek from Rightback’s sister company Blunt Arts, was over from Italy for a few days.
Beer and curry by London Bridge station, that’s the way to do business!
Tracks of My Life 23rd May 2010
At the recent opening of the new Butterfly World in St Albans (thoroughly to be recommended unless having butterflies the size of side-plates landing on your head is too disturbing!), I met a reporter from Radio Verulam, the local community radio station Elspeth Jackman. The radio station was supporting the event and promoting their programmes. So, naturally, I pressed Elspeth on the existence or otherwise of a folk programme on the station. There isn’t one currently apparently but there is no reason why there couldn’t be.
French Night at Baldock 12th May 2010
Because they know how significant French music is to our repertoire, our good friends Al and Sue Hewson, who run the Baldock and Letchworth Folk Club, invited us to support the Sheffield-based band Heretique – who, like us, also focus very strongly on French material.
We certainly enjoyed their material - which is more instrumental and less vocally oriented than ours - and from their feedback, they seemed to enjoy ours. They certainly play a marvellous array of squeezable, blowable and turnable (Hurdy-Gurdy, what else!!) instruments and do some excellent three part vocal harmonies.
Update on the new CD
Work continues on the new CD. We are back at Blue Moon Studios in Bodicote soon and we probably have another three more days after that. The problem is finding time away from our normal work pressures. However, we have an exciting new development which, when it comes to pass, we can share - suffice it to say that we have a folk musician of the highest pedigree booked to lay on some overtracks on three of the new CD's tracks.
The 'knob twiddling' is going well, led by the excellent Mark Sideleigh at Blue Moon. We feel he is really getting the best out of us.
