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.
We arrived on Saturday lunchtime and had the afternoon at leisure to soak up the atmosphere and enjoy some great acts. On the main stage, we had a wonderful couple of hours listening to Julie Fowlis and then the mighty Dervish. Both were really excellent. We then wandered round to the Club Tent and watched a few of the acts there. We very much enjoyed The Hurd (hurdy gurdy, guitar and bassoon) and a new name to watch out for Elliott Morris – there’s a lad we are definitely going to hear a lot of in the future!
We were royally looked after by the Club Tent team and the St. Neot’s team. The luck of the draw had us going on stage immediately after one of the main festival acts had played. The Quebe Sisters had attracted a standing room only crowd who were whipped up into a frenzy by their high speed music. From backstage, they sounded superb, and it was a bit intimidating going on after them.
Naturally, people began to drift away immediately the main act had finished and the stage was re-set for us. However, for those that stayed on (around 120 maybe), we held them there and we felt we gave a good 20 minutes. We deliberately focused on keeping the tempo quite high and got some good applause - even a few 'woo-woos'!). Afterwards, as we slipped round to the bar to get a pint, we got some nice feedback from a few people – which was both kind of them and very welcome to us.
We left a sizeable number of post-cards around the festival advertising the coming launch of The Bite and we saw a fair few people with them. So, well done to Blunt Arts and Rosie McNamara for an eye catching design for the album – and one which I have had made into a few ‘limited edition’ T-shirts (tee hee).
So, a good day had by all. Thanks again to Patti and Roger and all best wishes to the St Neot’s club.
