It is always a pleasure to play at the Barnet Folk Club.  Organiser JJ is always good humoured and welcoming and there is a good and friendly crowd of listeners to play to, and an excellent p.a. system to play through. 

This time, the fun was boosted by our being supported by a truly excellent support act.  TEYR (Cornish for three I am told) are a trio of highly talented young musicians playing mainly their own compositions in traditional style and traditional songs.  Combining fast and furious guitar work with silky accordion, agile uilleann pipes, good lead vocals and three-part harmonies, it is clear that the future of folk music is safe in the hands of young, friendly, musicians like this. 

JJ started the evening with a couple of numbers.  He always shows great support for our Spanish Civil War interests by playing Christy Moore’s Viva La Quinta Brigada and he did so again this night.  Being near Christmas, he also played The Pogues’ Fairytale of New York, another one of his classics.

TEYR then did a terrific 30 minute set, finishing to great applause.

We followed on with a lively set of our own.  The home of the Barnet Folk Club is the atrium area of The Arts Depot and it needs to be filled with sound.  So, we kept it reasonably lively throughout and received some lovely feedback at the end from members of the audience and from TEYR.

Barnet Folk Club finishes quite early.  So, given the short distance back to St Albans, there was time to get home and have a beer well before midnight.  Many thanks to JJ for another lovely night and best wishes to TEYR who we’re sure have a great folk future ahead of them.

Such are the fond memories of our visits to the Cambridge Folk Club that I was surprised when Rob told me that, other than to perform briefly at a charity evening organised by club members Les Ray and Deirdre Murphy, it had been a full 18 months since we had played there.

We arrived in good time for a full sound check, in the very capable hands of Les Scrine.  We also had chance to chat with our friends at the club before the evening truly got underway.  Downstairs in the bar, it was also good to see some old friends turn up unexpectedly and catch up with their news. 

The new arrangement of tables at the Cambridge Folk Club gives it a really nice cafe atmosphere and, with the benefit of a good p.a. set up, it is a club that just makes you want to sing.  So, before taking the stage, we spent a comfortable and pleasant half-hour watching The Brian Jeffels Band who we hadn’t seen since the Club tent at the Cambridge Folk Festival a couple of years earlier.  Although one person short through illness, they still managed to put on a very nice show of self-penned and traditional songs and tunes. 

Compere for the evening Nicky gave us a wonderful introduction and it was a pleasure to take the stage.  It is probably true to say that if ever anyone was to choose ‘the songs of na-mara’ as their specialist topic on Mastermind, the likelihood is they would be a member of Cambridge Folk Club.  We are aware that a number of club members at Cambridge already perform a variety of our songs - something we treat as a huge honour.  They also make song requests which we are happy to oblige (providing we have rehearsed them reasonably recently) and some members know our material well enough to sing along without being talked through the chorus. All of this is very uplifting and encouraging and makes you want to write, sing and play more.

Of the new material, The Garden of England and L’Amant de Nantes both went down very well, as did our new DADGAD arrangement of When I Took My Horse to Water.  Rob tried out some excellent new harmonies on some of the songs, and the instrumentals were cracking.  All in all, the evening went really beautifully and ended in a nice call for an encore at the end – which allowed us to perform the fourth request we had received ahead of the show.

As normal, having only had water to drink through the evening, I enjoyed my bottle of beer going home in the car.  Poor old Rob had to drive. 

It is always a pleasure to play at the Watford Folk Club.  It was doubly wonderful to find out that our appearance coincided with the fifth anniversary of the relaunch of the club.  The committee at Watford Folk Club have done a really terrific job in growing membership and, through their popular singarounds and guest nights, have brought a lot of pleasure to people in the surrounding area through their hard work.  They are also now beginning their second annual song competition which is a wonderful way to develop and attract new music.

Being not far from home, even the inner road circuits of Watford couldn’t contrive to delay us reaching the club and we arrived in good time to set up and chat with club organisers. The wonderful Helen Chinn was in fine form and buoyed enormously by having just that week taken ownership of a lovely, hand-crafted, parlour guitar.

Watford has some excellent floor singers and, after some very funny songs about what Superman does in retirement and the lost lumberjack loves of a Canadian waitress, Helen did me the honour of playing her version of a song called A Young Girl Confined, which I had translated from the singing of French chanteuse Anne Sylvestre very much with Helen’s haunting vocal capabilities in mind.

We played two full sets and had some warm feedback from this most welcoming of clubs to material both new and old.  At the end of the evening, committee member Alison Raymond very kindly invited us to consider entering ‘The Garden of England’ for the club’s impending song competition.  Sadly, neither Rob nor I were available for the night of the song competition and, as such, we were unable to get involved.

Many thanks to Helen, Alison, Peter, Julian and all our friends at Watford for their warm welcome. Many congratulations to the club on its fifth anniversary and here’s to a great song competition night and an equally successful next five years.

It was lovely to receive a request from Alan Castle, and Bob and Kathy Drage to return again to play at the Tenterden Folk Festival.  We had enjoyed our time there last year and were happy to make the long trip again to this very pleasant festival.

We had an early workshop on the Saturday morning and set off well before the motorways got busy, arriving around 9.30am.  The workshop itself was intimate and the players talented and fun to be with.

Lunchtime choices were made recognising the need not to eat too much before an afternoon concert and to find enough change from somewhere to feed the town’s very hungry parking meters! This was achieved at a small cafe with our own private show of morris dancing outside and the chance to chat with highly talented young singer, Heather Knights, who had been on the same bill with us at one of our Bromyard performances and was sharing the afternoon concert with us again at Tenterden.

As soon as we were able, we made our way across to The Saddlery, the venue for the afternoon concert, where we caught the end of Greg Harper’s session.  His thoughtful songs were then followed by Heather Knight’s sparkling performance.  We closed the concert with a 40-minute set.  The audience was modest in size but very fulsome in its support for the acts. Again, we were pleased to see L’Amant de Nantes and The Garden of England receive such an enthusiastic reception.

It was nice then to chat with Greg, Heather, friend Joe Whittaker from Swinging the Lead, and other members of the audience.  Without saying where, we also chatted with the organiser of a club we have been keen to play at for some time and it looks like a booking may be forthcoming.  Watch this space.

Given domestic commitments, it was reasonably early that we turned from home.  The motorways were again kind and, to complete a perfect day, my football team won a ‘must-win’ game – that doesn’t happen very often!

After letting the usual daily madness of the morning M25 calm down, we loaded up ‘the van’ with our instruments and necessaries on an overcast Friday morning and set off for Bromyard. Despite the weather, excitement was running high as great news had reached us earlier in the week. In addition to performing at two more intimate concert slots on Saturday afternoon and evening and running a workshop on the Sunday morning, we had also been allocated 50 minutes on the Main Stage on the first evening of the festival and would be the penultimate act of the evening, going on just ahead of headliners Show of Hands.  The thought of playing to a packed marquee added to the usual thrill of visiting a new festival.

The drive over to Bromyard was fine.  We stopped for coffee in picturesque Burford and, eschewing the ‘charms’ of the busiest service station either of us had ever seen,  we pressed on close to Bromyard for a pub lunch which turned out cheaper, hotter, quieter and superior to anything we could have hoped for aside the dear old M5. 

After lunch, it was a mere hop and a step into Bromyard where we registered with the organisers who furnished us with our wristbands for the weekend and information on our accommodation.  Sadly, the warmth of the organisers was not matched by the weather which broke at around this time and began to pelt the festival site with heavy rain.

Having a little time to kill, we had a wander around what was a compact site filled with a good array of craft, instrument and food stalls.  We wandered in to have a look at our Main Stage venue for the evening which impressive in size and the kit being mounted in it.  We dropped some CDs off with the on-site vendor.  We then moved the car to behind the Main Stage and hunkered down and waited for the sound check as the rain continued to fall heavily.  As we waited for Show of Hands to arrive, we spent our time between reading and taking sorties out to chat with the very friendly stewards and watch the sound technicians setting up.

 As both headliners and technically the most complicated band for the evening, Show of Hands naturally had precedence for the sound check.  Theirs is a very impressive, experienced and professional set up, both artistically and technically, and it was most instructive to watch them work through their sound check.  It was obvious even from the bits and pieces of the sound check that the audience were in for a treat that night.

We were next on for the sound check which went well.  The technical team remembered us from the Warwick Festival the year before and set us up well for the evening.  As we came to the end of our sound check, he band on before us, The Goat Ropers Rodeo Band, were just arriving for their sound check.

Given we had now had some time before the show itself we took the chance to drop off our bags at our accommodation for the weekend.  Robert was one of the generous souls in the town that had offered to put artists up for the weekend and, as we looked out of the window of his house at the pouring rain, we were doubly grateful for his hospitality!

Before setting off back to the festival site, we very briefly rehearsal a couple of things we wanted to ensure went right later on.  Once we were happy, we got back in the van, made our way back to the festival site and again parked up behind the Main Stage, ready for the show.

Prompt at starting time, comedian and fine musician Keith Donnelly got the show underway.  Sitting in the green room, we could gauge from the gales of laughter he was getting that there was already a pretty healthy audience in the marquee.

After Keith, it was the turn of the 'Goat Ropers'.  These three young lads from North Wales have a great future ahead of them.  With their close harmonies, great guitar work and thumping double bass, playing a mix of their own material and a few covers, they really got the audience going.  Between chatting in the green room with the very charming Keith Donnelly and sneaking a view of the Goat Ropers from the wings aside the Main Stage, the time passed quickly and we got ourselves ready to go on.

It is always a joy to be allowed to play a decent length set in any setting but particularly so with a big festival slot. It really allows you to get into your stride and so it was at Bromyard.  We eased into the performance with a song we know well and we know pleases audiences. From Rob's first mandola run and my first struck chord, we were away.  We showcased the full range of what we do to an increasingly packed marquee which, at the end, had over 1,000 in the audience.  We included new songs L'Amant de Nantes and Garden of England in the set and it was pleasing to know we had played them both well and that they had triggered such a good reaction from the audience.

But time passes quickly under the lights and our time was up in the blink of an eye.  Once finished we quickly removed our gear from the stage to make way for Show of Hands whom we’d spotted in the wings waiting to come on.

We retreated initially to the green room and had our first alcohol of the evening.  London Pride from the fridge  - and a couple of slices of toast and marmalade, don't knock it 'til you've tried it -, listening to Show of Hands getting going.  It doesn't get much better than that.  We chatted some more with Keith and briefly with organiser Dick Dixon and felt very content with what we'd achieved.  We then slipped round to the wings and took the opportunity to watch the rest of the Show of Hands set.  They are a great band and were really on form that night.  They had the audience singing lustily to their well known numbers and pleasing them further with newer songs.

Knowing that we would have to get the van off an increasingly soggy festival field late at night, we waited until Show of Hands went into their well deserved encores and took the opportunity to slip away offsite before the crowds began leaving the marquee.

As we motored back to our accommodation, Bromyard town looked as though it had had a good Friday night too.   In the five minutes back to our accommodation, we had two people veer dangerously close to the van as we were passing.  Indeed, one group of lads staggering along Bromyard high street carrying their cans of beer wouldn't have been too far amiss in a zombie film -but these were very clearly very content zombies.
Not surprisingly, we were ready to drop by the time we got into our accommodation and, as my mother used to say, we didn't need much rocking to get off to sleep.

It was only on the Saturday morning that we finally had chance to meet our host Robert.  To our amazement, when we did so, he was preparing a very good cooked breakfast for us. Sheer luxury!  We spent a nice hour chatting with Robert over his excellent breakfast before setting off to the festival site to check on CD sales and see who was about and what was going on.  The weather had improved and the site was busy.  Over a cup of coffee, we had a nice chat with the Goat Ropers who, like us, had had a great night the night before.  Given they are as keen to spread south as we are to spread north, we swapped some useful notes about contacts in our respective regions.  Rob and I then watched a few of the Morris teams in action and eventually turned back to Robert's for a quick rehearsal before our afternoon and evening concerts.

Both of our Saturday concerts were in the intimate surroundings of The Falcon Mews Theatre.  This was a nicely sized concert space created by the owners of The Falcon pub and used for amateur dramatics and other functions by local townspeople.

Since we were kicking off both the afternoon and evening concerts, we were there in good time to set up for what was the first of our two acoustic performances.  Afternoon compere Dave James was both welcoming and highly professional and, to allow us to better fine tune what we were going to perform in the afternoon session, kindly asked on our behalf who in the audience had seen us at the concert the night before. Very pleasingly a goodly number had seen us and one kind soul was heard to call out "Yeah, they were brilliant". That is all the encouragement anyone needs to throw themselves into a performance and we did so with gusto and our 40 minute slot flew by. We got great feedback from both the audience and from Dave.  Indeed, one elderly lady, whom we had seen get out of her seat and dance at the back of the theatre, independently took both Rob and I aside and said quietly, " Every year there is one standout band and, this year, it is you!".  How wonderful for her to say such a thing!

We stayed around to watch the lovely Heather Knights, the talented Infinite Cherries and the legendary Steve Tilston sets, taking it in turns to pop out briefly to get a sandwich and a cuppa.

Given that we were staying very close to The Falcon, we were back resting in the comfort of Robert's house within minutes of the concert finishing.

The evening concert had extra excitement for me as I knew that some close friends linked to my university days were going to come along to the show - and I hadn't seen some of them for over twenty five years!

As with the afternoon concert, we were kicking off the concert and arrived at The Falcon Mews in plenty of time to get tuned up and meet the MC for the evening.  About fifteen minutes before the show, my friends turned up and there was much hugging all round.  This had just turned a great weekend into a truly magical one.

I was keen to speak with the other acts for the evening, Issy and Dave Emeney with Kate Riaz, and The Teacups to explain that, despite us wanting to see them perform, I was extremely keen to catch up with my friends and (very unlike na-mara) I was likely to disappear after our performance.  All being nice people, they naturally understood the situation and were very gracious in accepting my apologies

With the added frisson of playing to old friends, the evening performance went really well.  It was a great honour to see one of our friends from Cambridge Folk Club return to see us for a third time in the festival.  Again, L'Amant de Nantes and Garden of England went really well, and we got a lovely warm feeling from the audience some of whom had told us they had been keen to see us in a more intimate setting than the main Stage..

It was lovely for me then to catch up with old friends and Rob was able to join us all later, after watching more of the evening show.  It is the mark of good friends that one feels it as easy as a warm bath, slipping back into conversation and catching up with their news, and so it was that night - and we talked until closing time and made plans to make sure it wasn't another twenty five years before we met up again!

The next morning, Robert again provided us with another wonderful cooked breakfast and we felt doubly privileged to have been looked after so well.  The morning timetable was quite tight for us.  So, once we had helped Robert clear away, we had to get down to the festival site and pick up any unsold CDs and then get back to the upstairs room in The Falcon Mews for Rob's workshop.

The day started well  - we had sold a good number of CDs at the festival site.  It got better when we found out how many people wanted to join the workshop. We had an absolutely full house for Rob's instruction on Asturian, Galician and French tunes.  Indeed, we had some people turn up just to hear more of our tunes -which was a huge boost for morale.

As he always does, Rob did a great job engaging people in the music and getting them playing along.  We had some talented musicians in the workshop and this meant we got through a lot of tunes, with harmonies aplenty being played.  The atmosphere and banter in the group was great.  We were able to give some leads to help those attending find bands like Tejedor and Niundes.  It was also pleasing to see the keenness of those attending to talk further with us after the workshop, and to see a further number of CDs being bought.  Along with those attending the workshop, we left the room with a great big smile on our faces.

It was now early afternoon and we needed to turn for home.  We had taken our leave from Robert earlier in the day and, as such, it was just a case of loading up the van and setting off.  We drove for around ninety minutes, had a coffee break and, with the roads behaving themselves, made it home in time for a full evening catching up with family at home.

All in all, Bromyard Folk Festival proved a great experience for us.  It allowed us to make a lot of new friends, especially from south Wales and the West Midlands - two regions we are extremely keen to play more music in.  Our music had been appreciated and we had seen and enjoyed the music of many others. Many thanks to Dick Dixon and his festival committee for their invitation to play at the festival. We very much hope that we can work with the same team again soon.  Similarly, many thanks to Robert who was a tremendous host, made us feel at home and who looked after us wonderfully well all weekend.

What a cracking night! Back in April, indefatigable folk singer, journalist and Radio Dacorum presenter Daria Kulesh kindly invited us to participate in an evening concert to end the first Dacorum Folk Fest on August 10^th.  Naturally, we were only too pleased to oblige.

The concert was called ‘Small World’ and was aimed at bringing together sounds, songs and stories from around the globe.  George Papavgeris provided a Greek flavour for the evening, we provided material from France and Spain, Philip Henry and Hannah Martin provided songs from both sides of the Atlantic, and Daria and friends in the newly formed band, KARA, provided both Russian and British songs and tunes.

The venue was the Boxmoor Playhouse in Hemel Hempstead, a former church hall which a team of volunteers had lovingly restored from near dereliction to a wonderful theatre venue and bar.  It is now the home of the Hemel Hempstead Theatre Company.

With the recent completion of holidays, we needed some rehearsal time on the afternoon of the festival and, as a result, missed out on what transpired to have been a wonderful afternoon of song supported, in particular, by the ever-energetic Watford Folk Club.  So, it wasn’t until 5.15 pm that we headed over to the theatre to meet the other performers and carry out a sound check. 

It was obvious immediately upon arrival that this would be a lovely night.  The technical team at the Boxmoor Playhouse were already well prepared and very welcoming on our arrival. Daria and her team were similarly hard at work ensuring everything and everyone was OK.

The concert was well attended by a mix of folk fans and those relatively new to the music and, as the time for the concert to begin drew near, the atmosphere was both expectant and convivial.  

George started the evening off with a lovely melange of his beautiful and thought provoking songs. In this, he was assisted by the astonishingly talented Jonny Dyer who happened to have been passing by on his way home from a folk festival and had popped in to see George perform. Together they entranced the audience and got the concert off to a great start.

We followed George with 35 minutes of material selected to showcase the full variety of what we do. We played some French material, some songs of the Spanish Civil War and a decent selection of our own material. A good sound system and warm vibes coming back from an audience make anyone want to perform and so it was with us.  We appeared to do well, were warmly applauded by the audience and we received great feedback at the interval.

KARA started the second half with a lovely mixture of material, some traditional, some their own. KARA provide a nice mix of accordion, guitar, hammer dulcimer and vocals.  Daria was in fine form fronting the band, putting great emotion into her singing.

Philip Henry and Hannah Martin finished the evening off and were spectacular.  Their sheer musicality, versatility and variety blew the audience away, folkies and non-folkies alike. They were also generous in the extreme. It is always nice when headliners take the time to watch the other acts that are performing. Hannah and Philip did this and were generous both backstage and on stage about our music and that of the other performers.  Many thanks to them for their kind words.

Being in nearby Hemel Hempstead, the journey home was short and simple and it was great to relax with a cool beer after a lovely night out.

We would like to thank Daria, Brian our host and compere for the evening, and all those involved in organising the Dacorum Folk Fest.  It all seemed to go extremely well and we certainly hope that they feel able to run similar events in the year ahead. 

Despite it being a long way to go, after days of blisteringly hot weather in London and St Albans both of us were looking forward to travelling to the beautiful coastal village of Cley-next-the –Sea in Norfolk to play a concert as part of the local Contemporary Arts Festival there.  We have found that our music goes down well with the audiences for such events and had a good feeling about the evening ahead.

Given the distance, we shared the driving and the journey to Norfolk proved uneventful other than for a minor accident just ahead of us which blocked the road and required Rob to execute a tight 3-point turn on a narrow country road minutes after taking the wheel of my car for the first time in a age.  Adrenalin is a great thing and despite his unfamiliarity with the car, we were back on the move again quickly and homing in on Cley.

Once there, we found our way to the venue, the magnificent local church, and were greeted warmly by the lovely Marie Askham, one of the festival organisers.  Given we had arrived in good time, Marie showed us some of the church and we were able to take in a little of the quite major art exhibition being hosted there.  Notwithstanding that the artistic gene-pool of my family has been thoroughly drained by my brother and daughter who are both excellent artists, I have always loved art and art exhibitions and this contemporary exhibition in such an historic setting, had many very interesting pieces to view.  There were other, larger, pieces throughout the nearby graveyard.

The Church of St Margaret’s stands testimony to the historic affluence of the village of Cley.  It is a beautiful and peaceful building, full of rich detail and, of great significance to us of course, a wonderful acoustic.  It even has bats in the belfry – two types of bats in fact. 

We decided we didn’t need a p.a. system given the wonderful acoustic of the church and so the set up for the concert was straightforward.  Marie kindly made us a life restoring cuppa and we had time to have a little rehearsal and a bite to eat before the audience began to arrive.  Marie has an academic interest in aspects of the Spanish Civil War and was very interested to talk to Rob about his family’s experiences.

Unlike most of the UK that evening (Glasgow at 30 degrees), Cley was unusually damp and refreshingly chilly as a sea haar rolled in off the North Sea.   Still, a hardy mix of local people, local friends and folk-oriented visitors to the village came along and we held a truly lovely, intimate, concert. 

 This was just our kind of audience; interested and listening intently to the stories we were telling.  At both the interval and the end of our performance, audience members were keen to chat and find out more about the various stories we had been regaling them with..  We tried out the new opening to our new song Garden of England and it worked pretty well with the song now beginning to settle itself nicely into our repertoire.  Rob also concluded our new French translation of L’Amant de Nantes with a beautiful set of harmonics.

Having not set up a p.a., it was quick to get packed up.  We said our farewells to Marie and a number of her fellow festival organisers and turned for home.  This was an early evening concert and, as such, we were back on the road for 10.00pm. This caught Frustratus, the God of roadworks and road closures, off guard and the journey was uneventful other than for a Starsky and Hutch driver switchover at a local petrol station and the jaw-dropping realisation of how big the air bases in that part of the world actually are. 

Thanks to Marie and all at the Cley Contemporary Arts festival for the invitation.  Whether as performer or tourist, I shall certainly be returning the Cley-next-the Sea in the future and Rob tells me the pickled eggs in the local pub are pretty good too!

With a keen eye on weather conditions, we were pretty sure (it being close to midsummer’s day and all that! that we could'nt be prevented from reaching the wonderful Song Loft at Stony Stratford this time by a heavy downfall of snow - but with a summer like this one, anything could happen!  Six months earlier, the snow had indeed closed in and both club organisers and ourselves agreed at that time it would not be a good idea for either us and club members to be out on snowy, icy, roads on a night like that.  So, with confidence we set off in good heart; nothing could go wrong this time! 

We both like playing at The Song Loft very much and this was our first full evening at the club.  We had done a floor spot and a support slot for the Tannahill Weavers at the club previously and the club organisers had shown a great interest in our music from those early appearances and kindly invited us back to present more of our material.

With no snow and a wave goodbye to an already choking M1, we set off cross-country, up the relatively fast A5.  Indeed,we were just congratulating ourselves on making excellent time to the club when we hit a long and completely static traffic jam just before the roundabout on the edge of Stony Stratford – and there we sat.... and sat.  The time we’d set aside for a quiet little rehearsal ticked away, Google Maps was on overdrive (how far away are we...?) and club telephone numbers were found in preparation for delivering bad news. Thankfully, just as things began to look desperate, the traffic eased and we edged past the accident site and made it to The Cock Hotel club venue with just enough time to set up and tune up before club members arrived.

The Song Loft is a friendly club with the best of banter and it was nice to catch up again with the club organisers Colin Turner and Jane Armour who were as welcoming and considerate as ever. 

There is a lot of talent at The Song Loft and fellow club organiser Maurice Clark started the musical part of the evening with a couple of very nice songs.  We then performed our first set which seemed to go down very well. 

The second half floorspots were also kicked off by another of the club’s organisers, Bill Reed, performing a couple of his own excellent compositions.  Jeff Wesley and Andrew then between them performed very nice traditional songs from both the UK and the US.  Finally, Sally Barnes, winner of the 2012 Watford Folk Club Song Competition played a couple of numbers including her lovely winning entry, ‘Way to Go’.  We then finished off the night with our second set.

The Song Loft is a club that loves to sing and it iwas a real pleasure throughout the evening to hear your own words being picked up and sung back to you.  We were able to give our new song ‘Garden of England’ its second ever outing and l’Amant de Nantes is really settling into the set now.  We also started our performance with Three Bonny Ships in its revamped DADGAD form, which is really coming along.  Both at half time and at the end of the performance, we were given some lovely feedback from club members attending.

I can report that the journey home went as ‘smoothly’ as the journey to Stony Stratford.  I'm sure if Rob and I were ancient Greeks, we’d be in no doubt by now that we’d somehow grossly offended Frustratus, the god of roadworks.  Of late we’ve been down more diversions than a government minister on Newsnight trying to throw Jeremy Paxman off the scent.  This evening was no exception with the A5 closed off on our way home. This forced us to go round by Leighton Buzzard which was trauma in itself - bringing back memories of a day 15 years earlier when we took my four year old Thomas the Tank Engine fanatic son for a trip on the town’s renowned narrow gauge steam railway. Exceptionally I’m sure, the weather was appalling that day and the train was much delayed and in need of repair - a drenched and grouchy family outing of epic proportions then unfolded.  The town has ever since been known in the McNamara household as ‘Late and Buggered’ and I have never been back - until now. Anyway, we eventually made it home and I was able to grab a beer and some chilli pickle on toast before bed – don’t knock it if you haven’t tried it.....

Many thanks to Colin, Jane, Maurice and all the club organisers at The Song Loft for their invitation for us to play for them.  We wish them all a restful summer and every success with the club when it kicks off again in September. 

Rob and I have played many interesting venues in our time but this is the first time we have played in a courtroom.  As part of a weekend of music in the town, courtesy of the St. Albans Festival, local folk organisers, Alison Raymond, Alison MacFarlane and others had arranged a solid eight hours(!) showcasing the best in local folk music in the former courtroom of the old town hall in the centre of town.  While a truly grand session of musicians was being taking place in a large airy room upstairs, an impressive string of local folk musicians were performing in the courtroom downstairs.  Below the courtroom, there were music workshops being held in the old cells, with the only access (literally) through the dock.

Given our forthcoming gig at The Song Loft in Stony Stratford on the following Friday, Rob and I were keen to meet up at lunchtime and get some serious rehearsal in prior to heading off to join fellow local folk musicians in the town centre.  Sadly, this meant we missed the chance to support some of our friends' and hear their performances, but it was clear on arrival that the day had been going very well.

Having picked up a good friend who wanted to support us on the afternoon, we arrived at the old town hall about 45 minutes before our 20 minute slot and were very pleased to be able to see the excellent Malcolm Hobbs and Foxglove Trio sessions prior to going on ourselves.

The courtroom was packed with folk followers, local townspeople and a number of tourists just passing through.  The atmosphere was appreciative and respectful to all the acts.  The high vaulted nature of the courtroom was such that the sound seemed to disappear and, in truth, the acoustic took a wee bit of getting used to.  Feeling that quiet songs might just get lost in the ‘hushed courtroom’, we made a decision to do four fast and loud numbers which, given our usual desire to mix the pace and tone of our performances, was a bit unusual for us.  However, the strategy seemed to work and, as far as we could make out, everyone appeared to enjoy what we did.

We were able to stop on and listen to Martin's Joy, a very pleasant duo who were performing after us.  Then, sadly, because I had another commitment some distance away from St. Albans later that evening, we had to say our farewell to the day's organisers and our friends and get on the road.

Well done to Alison MacFarlane and Alison Raymond on putting together a great afternoon of folk music and thanks to them for the invitation to join other folk players from the local area to promote folk music in the town.  We sincerely hope that the evening concert, with Hannah James and Sam Sweeney and others, went well.

Wanting to be sure of reaching the Great kNight Folk Club in good time, I picked Rob up from the station and we set out for our first visit to this excellent Northampton-based folk club.  The capricious nature of motorways was such that, of course, we arrived with oodles of time to spare with ample chance to relax in the car park at the Old White Hart before the club organisers arrived.

We were pleased to say 'hello' to the excellent sound technician team and help them in with some gear.  Held in a large room above a busy pub, this is a very professionally run folk club and, as we were to find out, has good sound quality as one of its major strength.  Nothing seemed too much trouble on the technical side and the sound check was done very efficiently indeed.

Albeit this was our first visit to the Great kNight club, we had met committee member Kevin T Ward a couple of years earlier at a gig when we were supporting Katriona Gilmore and Jamie Roberts at Rugby Roots concert.  Kevin, who was acting as compere for the night, has a compendious knowledge of French and Breton music and it was great to catch up with all his news on that front and with respect to the bands he is currently playing with.

We were at Great kNight to support Bob Fox and although not very well, Bob gave a fine performance combining many of his classics and songs from War Horse, with songs from his native North East.

Our own support slot of thirty minutes went down very well and at both the break and the end of the show, we received some excellent feedback from audience and club committee members alike.

We would like to thank Kevin for his kind words both when introducing us and at the end of the show.  Likewise, many thanks to Andrew and his fellow committee members for the original invitation to visit the club and, finally, thanks to Richard and his partner for the quality sound production throughout the night. We very much hope we can return to Great kNight in 2014 to show its welcoming members a little bit more of what we do.