The last evening of May saw Rob and I making our first visit to the Loughton Folk Club.

The club is held in a nice sized room on the second floor of the Loughton Club in the centre of town.  So, kind to us was the M25 that we arrived before anyone else. So, we took advantage of the quiet, tuned up and had ourselves a 10 minute rehearsal to get ourselves settled in.

Organisers Jim and John arrived to hear us having a bash through one of our numbers and we had chance to introduce ourselves while the room was in the process of being transformed from bar room to folk club.

The floorsingers were very good and we were very fortunate to have talented palyer of all things squeezable, Owen Woods as our support. We had previously worked with him in January at the Maltings in St Albans. Owen again played some wonderful music and had the audience entranced. He even showed his prowess at tapping the rhythm with his feet, French Canadian style, (I forget the technical term that Owen used) as he played through some excellent Quebecois tunes.  I really hope Owen gets the exposure he so richly deserves.  He tells us that he has been gigging with the very talented Marianne Neary  - so that would be a pairing to watch out for!

Club locals,  five ukeleles strong, singing Hi-ho-Silver lining was great fun at half time and the Loughton audience clearly loves to sing and sings very well.  Indeed, it has its own chorus song book, which means that everyone can truly join in – what a great idea!

Our two sets went well and we received some very kind words from the organisers and audience. Many thanks to Jim for inviting us to play and for arranging a date switch for us, to enable us to honour a commitment that had arisen in late April. 

 We very much hope to be invited back to Loughton in the future and could well be going back for a special evening of protest song in November.

Without checking, I am pretty sure that this was the first time that we have done two na-mara gigs on the same day.  So, fortified with a decent breakfast, we set off for the Dartford Bridge to head south of the river.

The first event of the day was a themed performance along the lines of the one we had done in Croydon a few weeks earlier, based around the origins of the Spanish Civil War and the history of the Basque Children. 

Joe Whittaker, who is a man of immense energy and a wonderful spirit, has (amongst a myriad of other things) with others been raising funds for the restoration of the Old Church in Ash in Kent.  One of the many things he has done in this regard is to organise themed musical events. He had done one before - using sea shanties to recount early sea voyages - and when he spotted that we were playing not too far from Ash one Sunday in May, decided to approach us about doing a lunchtime themed session with songs and words, in Ash.  Joe had heard us on the radio and had met us at Dartford Folk Club earlier in the summer and felt our themes would be of great interest to local music lovers and folk club members alike.

Joe and his wife Kate had made us a kind invitation to lunch, which we were very happy to accept. It was great to meet them both and hear of the wide range of interests they have and activities they are involved with.  Wonderfully ‘fed and watered’, we then made our way to the church. 

The Old Church in Ash has a wonderful acoustic and Rob was in his element warming up before people arrived with a range of his classical pieces. (How many fingers has that lad got?) This is a place where music soars.  It is also a very beautiful and tranquil space, and we spent a little time before the performance just appreciating its elegant loveliness.

As the time for the start of the performance came closer, the pews began to fill up.  The performance was, as in Croydon earlier in the month, split into two distinct halves.  The stories we were telling are highly emotionally charged and this was a space to capture and channel that emotion.  The audience was engaged and closely involved in our narrative, the music and songs (some traditional, some self-penned) went well, and we had long chats with many in the audience, both at half time and after the show. For many in the audience, the stories were wholly new to them.   Many were interested enough to buy CDs, including our new EP, Songs of the Spanish Civil War..

It was also very nice to meet up again with one member of the Dartford Folk Club whose father had fought in the British Battalion and survived the Spanish Civil War but had not had the chance to learn much about it before his father died, and who had made a special journey to Ash to hear us perform.

Following the performance, we returned to Joe and Kate’s for some more excellent and restorative tea and cake.  After getting our breath back, we said our thanks and goodbyes and set off for a full gig at the Horsham Folk Club in West Sussex, arriving just as the organisers were opening up the club.

The Horsham club is held in a large room with a well stocked bar at the end and has a substantial seating capacity.

The organisers were very welcoming and made us feel quickly at home. It is always a pleasure when there is plenty of time and space to tune up and prepare for a performance!

Club members began arriving and it was nice to see Rob's brother-in-law and wife in the audience.

Over and above the quality of the floorsinging, the thing that struck me about the club was the number of songs I was hearing for the first time.  Despite my listening to folk music pretty exclusively since my mid-teens, nearly all of the songs sung that night were new to me.  Many of them were beautifully delivered,

After our afternoon performance, our 'ear' was in and we felt we played well. Certainly the feedback we received throughout and after the performance was excellent. One elderly lady was especially kind, thanking us and suggesting our performance was 'the best ever'. What a wonderful compliment and we are thankful to her for giving us such a fillip.

Many thanks to Mary Gilmore and all at the Horsham Folk Club for having the courage to invite a new band to headline for them, for being so welcoming while we were there and we very much hope that we will be invited back to this excellent club at some time.

We always look forward to playing the Cambridge Folk Club.  The club and its organisers have always been so encouraging and supportive of what we do that it is very much like a meeting of friends when we return there.  As a result of that support, they have invited us to step through from doing a 10 minute floor slot, to a showcase spot and invitations to perform at their Cambridge Folk Festival Club tent, then a support slot, and now a full booking – which it was an honour for us to do. 

Rob and I both had personal friends in the audience who were coming along to the club for the first time and, with the regulars, the club filled up nicely before we went on.

Those who were there early had the chance to see two excellent new talents just launching out on the scene, Matt Tighe and Joe Devine.  Matt is an immensely talented young fiddler and Joe is a great guitarist. They were a great way to kick off the evening and we should all watch out for their names in the future – they will go places.

For ourselves, we were able to introduce some new material to the Cambridge Folk Club members – in particular, The Silver Duro, The English Penny and Navajos and Pirates.  We also performed our newly finished rendition of Jamie Foyers.  All of these went down well and, indeed, some of the club members were very keen to learn both the songs and the stories behind The English Penny and Navajos and Pirates.

As always, Howard and Les created a great sound in the club and we ended the night to genuine and enthusiastic calls for an encore.  It is always a pleasure to visit Cambridge and this was no exception – nice people, nice club.

With her plummy overtones, our Sat Nav has for some time been christened Camilla and, like all computers, she is a quick witted idiot that sometimes does things that don't appear very sensible.  The plotted trip from Maesteg to Southampton for example, via M4 and (presumably then the M27) looked a long and boring option to us - so, we cut across country soon after the bridge crossing back into England.  However, having been taken almost into the centre of Bath to come back out again, pretty much through the centre of Salisbury and generally experiencing really tough driving for most of that Saturday morning, I think we might listen a bit more to Camilla next time.  This was hard travelling.

Anyway, we arrived in Southampton in the sweltering heat to play at the 75th anniversary commemoration of the arrival in Southampton of the Basque children.  A major exhibition and gathering of the Basque children and their families had been planned for the day, utilising facilities at the University of Southampton.  We shall draw a veil over our efforts trying to find the relevant lecture theatre in the maze that is the University campus and simply say that we got there in the end.

The University technician staff were great in helping us set up in a very large lecture theatre.  As you might imagine, the acoustics were excellent. We also meet up with two members of the BBC who have been working with Rob on a documentary (to be aired on June 18th at 11.00am on Radio 4) on the Basque children, their arrival in Britain and their families' experiences of life in Britain.  They were going to record some of our songs and music to include in their planned programme; they had done likewise at the Guernica commemoration in Islington, but wanted some more material that they could choose from.

After a commemorative lunch, around 150 of the attendees at the event came across to the lecture theatre and took their places for what turned out to be a very emotional afternoon.  Ultimately, many of our songs are about their stories and the power that music has to trigger memories and emotions should not be underestimated.  For many, the songs articulated their feelings and we had many supportive and often tearful comments made when we had finished.

The afternoon's concert concluded with some Basque dancing.  I had never seen Basque traditional folk dance before and I found it extraordinary.  A dance troupe had come across from Bilbao to perform these beautiful and balletic dances.  Without doubt, some of these dances must be related to our own Morris dancing traditions.  There was a dance with bells attached to the dancers' calves, there was a form of sword dance, and other similarities in some of the dances.  They even led a dance up the steps and around the back of the lecture theatre - exhilarating (ad every health and Safety officers nightmare).

Not surprisingly, Rob met up with many old friends at the gathering, including a number that he hadn't seen for a very long time.

Around 6.30pm, we packed up the jalopy and, this time, we trusted in Camilla to get us speedily out of Southampton and home in time for beers and a well earned slump in front of the telly.  It had been a great weekend.  We had met a lot of interesting folk, we had touched the hearts of many people and we had thoroughly enjoyed ourselves.  The following weekend was going to be even busier - bring it on!

We might have said somewhere else in this blog that 2012 will see na-mara play its most northerly, southerly, easterly and westerly gigs.  This was to be our most westerly gig - a trip to Wales, to a town neither of us had had the pleasure of visiting before, Maesteg.

Derek Smith, of Welsh folk rock band Mabon, now fronted by his son Jamie, and his friend Peter had invited us to play some of our Spanish Civil War songs at a Welsh - Asturian weekend.  The event was multi-dimensional in that it would cover music, dance and food.  One nice idea was to have Asturian chefs cooking their regional food, but with Welsh ingredients.  The linkages between the two areas are strong for at least three reasons – first, they are both coal mining areas, second, they are both Celtic areas, and third, the Welsh miners gave support to the Asturian miners in the Spanish Civil War.

We got up early on the Friday and set off in glorious weather.  The intention was to arrive in Maesteg in time to see the unveiling of a plaque to three Welsh International Brigaders from the Maesteg area, by the local MP.  This we managed to do in good time, the M4 being kind to us.  We drove the brief climb up the valley to Maesteg itself, nestled in amongst the surrounding hills.  Maesteg has clearly had a significant industrial past and is suffering severe depression currently.  However, on a sunny day like this, one can appreciate that, if economic prosperity could be helped to return to the most deserving of areas, this would be a very fine place to be situated.

Various local people and dignitaries arrived at the Town Hall to peruse a truly excellent exhibition put together by the local library service, on the background to the Spanish Civil War and the role played in it by local heroes,.  Local schoolchildren and parents arrived to sing three beautiful songs in Welsh.  Rob and I played Only for Three Months and The Bite which were very well received.  Then four young men from Asturias then played some Asturian folk tunes - more of which in a moment!

We stayed and chatted with the various attendees at the event and were then taken to our accommodation.  We got ourselves settled and wandered off around the town to get a snack for, in the evening, we were going to perform at a music concert, with the Asturian lads.

We were given an excellent soundcheck at the Town Hall later that afternoon and then the Asturian band arrived.  However, unlike the lunchtime session, they now arrived armed with their main instruments.  We watched in complete admiration as they went through their sound check.  Both Rob and I adore Asturian music and, of course, it turns out at least two of these guys were in one of the best Asturian bands around - the Gatos del Fornu!  Wow, can those guys play - this was going to be an exceptional night.

The concert when it began, was supplemented with both Asturian cider and some excellent Asturian food.  We played well and received some excellent feedback from the audience.  (We even sold a CD to the local MP.) The Asturian band played really really well with squeezebox, gaita, flute, guitar and drums.

When the concert was over, we all repaired to a nearby club for a last drink.  In the pounding rhythms of the bar, Derek was kind enough to give us some very welcome pointers about how to get ourselves better known both generally and locally in south Wales.  Although under a lot of pressure through the day, Derek and Peter had maintained phenomenal good humour and had had us in fits for most of our stay.  We very much hope we are invited back to south Wales.  It would certainly be nice to meet up with Derek and Peter again at one of the numerous festivals they organise - though we guess probably not their Father Ted festival in Ireland.

We swapped CDs with the Gatos del Fornu and Derek kindly made us a present of a Mabon CD and DVD and – abracadabra - we had the 'in flight entertainment' sorted for our trip to Southampton the following day (and very good it was too).   If you haven't heard both of these bands, you are really missing something - check them out.

This was a special event to be invited to play at.  Through the International Brigade Memorial Trust publicity for the Guernica commemoration in Islington, Garry Davis of the Croydon Folk and Blues club had invited us to join the club for a special Friday night event at Ruskin House in Croydon, sponsored by the folk and blues club and the Croydon TUC.

The night was given a very Spanish flavour with Bernard Sullivan playing Spanish classical guitar and other pieces and local band Los Amigos providing some very up tempo South American music.

Our own performance was part lecture and part music.   In preparation for an event we had long been booked to do in Kent, we had prepared a two part programme.  The first part was a high-level explanation of the background and history of the Spanish Civil War, the second part, a recounting of the story of the Basque children. Both halves were interspersed with our songs of the Spanish Civil War plus various instrumentals. 

On arrival at Ruskin House we were greeted by both the Basque Flag and the tricolour flag of the Spanish Republic.  The organisers had put huge effort into decorating the concert room with information, photos and accounts of the Spanish Civil War. 

The event was very well attended and, despite our nervousness about how a part-lecture, part-performance would go down, everything went off very well indeed.

Having worked with the Philosophy Football team before, we were very pleased to receive another invitation to ply for them.  This time it was at an event to commemorate the criminal bombing of Guernica by fascist forces on the 26^th April 1937.  This evening event had been organised in association with the International Brigade Memorial Trust and the Basque Children of '37 and, as such, we knew many of those who were there on the night.  It was held in a pub in Islington which, on a steamy hot evening, was heaving by the time the show started. 

Very much in line with the Philosophy Football’s approach, this was a wonderful mixed cocktail of poetry, reminiscence, film, lecture, panel debate and music.  Francesca Beard provided some moving and thought provoking poetry, Peter Kennard spoke about Picasso’s painting Guernica, leading historians and journalists spoke on the panel, there was black and white film of the Basque children in the UK, and we and the great David Rovics provided the music.

This was a roiling, boiling kind of a night – great fun! 

Our good friends Al and Sue Hewson, who run the Baldock and Letchwork Folk Club, very kindly invited us up to support James Hickman and Dan Cassidy. 

With a number of future gigs relating to the Spanish Civil War coming up, this gave us the chance, in two sets, to perform and fine tune some new material - in particular, our rendition of Ewan McColl’s Jamie Foyers, and our songs, The Silver Duro and The English Penny.

We both enjoyed listening to James and Dan.  They take great care over how they sound and this serves them very well.  Great singing and guitar playing by James Hickman and wonderful fiddle playing from Dan Cassidy, all accompanied by wry humour and mutual teasing between these longstanding friends.  These are two gentlemen musicians and we had a very nice conversation with them about instruments and clubs.  It is nice to meet some headliners who show genuine interest in the clubs they visit and the acts they see there.  We wish them all the very best.

Oh - and with apologies to all the Baldock and Letchwork Folk Club, I won the raffle ........again!  Last time we’d been there, I had won the raffle and judiciously chose the box of chocolates over the wine.  Showing immense self control, my wife and I had contained ourselves to a couple of treats a night until they were finally gone – so, what do I do but go and replenish the stocks of chocs!  Will I ever be thin again?

After far too long, this was a chance to return to the wonderful Dartford Folk Club. This is a big, vibrant and welcoming club that has top acts on the bill on every week. Following a short exchange of e-mails, the club organisers were very obliging and found us a floor spot on the night that an act I have long wanted to see was playing, Megson. As an exile from my home town of Middlesbrough, I have long admired Megson's heartfelt tales of the town's plights and people.  This was an excellent chance to see them live.

The M25 was kind to us and we were able to get to Dartford early.  Pam gave us a lovely welcome on the door and Ian, the MC for the evening, was very generous and did his utmost when opening the night to ensure that we were able to play three numbers.  We took the opportunity to show the fullest range of what we do - so, we did our translated French sea-shanty Three Bonny Ships, our self-penned Spanish Civil War song, The Bite, and the traditional Irish song, Flower of Magherally.

It was good to be able to meet club regular Joe Whittaker who, as one of the organisers of the Friends of Old Ash Church, is hosting a special performance of our Spanish Civil War music on 20^th May.  As often occurs also at our gigs, we had conversations with someone whose father had been an International Brigader and was very keen to understand more about the conflict in 1930s Spain.  Following conversations with a number of people it seems possible that a number of those who watched us at Dartford could make the journey to Ash to see us perform. 

I also took the opportunity to talk with Megson.  Not only are they highly talented musicians and singers, but they are also extremely pleasant and engaging to talk with.  We swapped stories about Middlesbrough and the ups and downs of our beloved local football team.  Conversations revealed that my own parents’ house was barely more than a stone’s throw from the family home of one half of Megson.  Small world.

As with the first time we visited it, we liked Dartford Folk Club enormously and sincerely hope that we both see some more Dartford regulars in mid-May, and that we can return to the club in due course.

Having a very understanding partner who didn’t mind me rearranging her birthday celebrations, Rob and I were able to make the trip over to the excellent Twickenham Folk Club to once again support the wonderful Vin Garbutt.

We quickly assured Vin when we walked in that we weren’t really stalking him – after all, this was the third time in reasonably quick succession we had supported him!  The atmosphere in what turned out to be a full house was great and the club organisers provided an excellent p.a. system and time for a good sound check.  With the unseasonably warm weather, it felt like a summer’s night had arrived early and everyone was on good form.

From the comments we received later, it certainly felt as though our set was well received by an audience who were largely new to our music. Vin himself was on cracking form – great songs, excellent jokes, amazing penny whistle playing.  He manages to combine all of this with being both friendly and very approachable.  Many thanks to Twickfolk for the invitation.