19th March 2008, Baldock and Letchworth Folk Club
Thanks to the continuing support of Alan and Sue Hewson, we made a very pleasant and welcome return to the Mad Nanny! Folk Club at the Orange Tree in Baldock for a full spot. We had a modest but very supportive turnout including a number of our friends from St Albans and nearby. So, it was a nice cosy atmosphere - which the excellent Orange Tree bar helps to generate.
2nd March 2008, Readifolk
A very nice return to the excellent Readifolk Club in The Gardener's Arms in Reading. Rob and I had very much enjoyed our two visits to Readifolk and were happy to return and do a support slot. This allowed us to again play our new composition, 'Solo Por Tres Meses' and we also introduced The Flower of Magherally into the repetoire for the first time. Some excellent floor singers and a couple of good songs from MC Malcolm provided the rest of the support for the evening with Ceri Rhys Matthews and Christine Cooper providing the main act for the evening.
22nd February - Return to Cambridge
After a period of rehearsal and holidays, it was good to be back on the road as na-mara. Although we have a support slot coming up in Cambridge in the not too distant future, we took no persuading to accept the invitation to come and join the regular singers night at the Cambridge Folk Club. We are always very well received and looked after there -so the hours trip is always made very worthwhile.
In the studio, January 20th
Bookings-wise, January is relatively quiet and Rob and I have been concentrating on moving some new material forwards. Our good friend Bob Kidby, who we have known for many years, kindly offered to act as recording technician for the day - rather than be the superb jazz guitarist he is - and record some of our new material. We also asked our friend Tony Garritty to come and help us out on a few tracks with the bodhran. Many thanks to Bob and Tony for al they did to help us; we are over the moon with the output.
A little bit of this and a little bit of that
As Christmas begins to hove in view, Rob and I have been busy on a number of different projects. As some of you may know, Rob and I are now enjoying playing with Alan and Sue Hewson's band Tam Lin ,where we both play social functions and we are beginning to get a repertoire together to play various folk clubs. We played our first folk club gig earlier this week supporting the great Andy Irvine at Baldock and Letchworth.
Thanks to Ross Scrivener
Just a brief note to thank Ross Scrivener of the Barton Le Clay Folk Club for sending us through some of the excellent video material taken from their all day charity folk event held in Barton in late June this year. Ross and his friends at Barton had obviously lavished a great deal of care and attention on making a nice video product from the day, and it is something that Rob and I are very grateful to receive. Ross has also been very happy to let us put this material onto our MySpace site - and I have now given it to Craig at Rightback Records for putting on the site.
Redbourn Folk Club, 11th October
Our final current booking of this short 'season' was to support Bill Whaley and Dave Fletcher, at the Redbourn Folk Club.
Planning and playing, late September, early October 2007
We have a couple of important support gigs to do, so not surprisingly Rob and I are rehearsing a lot at the moment. The set went very well in Cambridge and, for the moment, we are going to stick to that and then, when back from holidays and business commitments in late October, then move on to the next stage in development. We are also doing quite a bit with Tam Lin - so, we are certainly very busy.
Baldock and Letchworth, 3rd October 2007
This was the first of two support slots in quick succession. Here, with our good friends at the Baldock and Letchworth Club (which given our links to Alan and Sue Hewson of Tam Lin and Millrace) feels increasingly like a home club for us, we were supporting the Seattle-based pairing of Pint and Dale. Rob's oldest son came along to give us moral support, and help carry the increasing number of instruments we seem to be playing these days.
Laxfield Festival of Tolerance, 22nd September 2007
Not long after the exhilaration of playing at Cambridge, we had an early morning, up and at 'em trip back eastwards to Suffolk - the furthest east we've played - to the small and very beautiful village of Laxfield.
Some 450 years ago, a Protestant preacher was martyred in Laxfield and, as the name suggests, this event is there to promote religious and philosophical tolerance - which seems the right thing for us to be supporting. Naturally, it also has a Tudor flavour.
