With the Christmas period, the hard work on managing the launch of The Bite and with working and doing some draft recordings of possible new material, there hasn’t been a lot of time for actual performing.  So, it was great to be back out on the road. 

Our great friends Al and Sue Hewson at the Baldock and Letchworth Folk Club found time in a busy schedule for us to perform a couple of numbers in between a typically great support slot by Malcolm Hobbs and a highly entertaining full programme from Nancy Kerr and James Fagan. 

Playing in a packed room at Baldock’s Orange Tree pub was what we needed to get us back and focussing on playing live.  It was excellent preparation for a showcase spot back at the Cambridge Folk Club. 

Given that the invite was to play for the Cambridge Society of the Chartered Institute of Linguists and that, owing to business commitments, Rob was on the other side of the world, it was more than a little daunting to contemplate playing some of our translated songs, solo, to some for the best interpreters and translators currently working in the UK!

However, as with most things in life, the fear is entirely in one’s own head.  A nicer, more welcoming and receptive pride of lions would be hard to find.  The event at Darwin College Cambridge proceeded from an extremely interesting lecture by a professor of linguistics at City University, through a buffet lunch, and then I played for around 45 minutes of na-mara material. 

I half expected many of those attending to disappear after the food, but around two-thirds stayed on and were extremely attentive to and appreciative of my set.  Naturally, missing him immensely, I had to make some new arrangements to cover for the fact that Rob couldn’t be there (and, of course, throughout, I could hear Rob playing in my head but, of course the audience could not) but everything seemed to work out well.  I just have to unlearn my bespoke arrangements now, for when Rob returns!

I was invited to speak a little about the issues of translation for the na-mara project and, as written about earlier in this blog trail, I touched on the issues of not only to translate the words but then to catch the meter and the rhyme, and to stay true to the nature and flow of the narrative.  The audience seemed both understanding and supportive of the project, which was a great boost. 

Thanks to Les Ray who we know from the Cambridge Folk Club for the invitation and, it seems like the local branch of the Chartered Institute might be planning a collective night out in mid-January 2011 to come along and see the full act at the Cambridge Folk Club. It would be lovely to see everyone again!

Ross Scrivener has done a great job getting a folk club going at The Bull Hotel in Barton-le Clay. He has managed to attract a lot of local acts to perform and we were delighted to be invited to return to Barton and assist in his project.  As always, the welcome was terrific (as was the Adnams beer – I wasn’t driving!)

We did a full set around some very nice floor spots from Ross and his fellow club members, and we look forward to returning to Barton in 2011.

Tonight was a return to the Herga Folk Club .  Their committee had done us the honour of having us as their guests for the evening. This venerable old club is the home of many great singers and the early singaround was done with great skill and gusto. We were delighted to see Christine Connolly again, who sang an excellent couple of number with her playing partner Steve.  The great George Papavgeris was also there.  Herga is George’s home club and he did us two great honours.  First, having explained that after a very long weekend at the Banbury Folk Festival he might have to leave early, he stayed for the entirety of our performance and, second, when he was asked to perform, he played an Asturian song for us in honour of our playing list.  Many thanks George!

We had some really nice feedback after the performance and sincerely hope that we can return to guest again at Herga in the future.

Having been contacted through our website, this was a very nice invitation from a nearby club with a very nice atmosphere.  In central Barnet, on the last Friday of every month, the Barnet Acoustic Cafe hosts a lovely evening of music of all sorts and poetry – if you are nearby, check it out.  We saw some excellent performances including Eastern European and Celtic music, acapella music from three, four and seven people, a visiting singer over from New York to do some recording, was in great voice and a local young blues singer was very impressive.   

We were originally asked to do two or three numbers, but someone somewhere must have liked what we were doing as we ended up doing six songs and tunes in the end.  The club organisers were extremely welcoming, and we had a really good evening.  I think we made some new friends.

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. 

Despite some competing football events on telly, we had a nicely full room.  Many of our friends came along to support us, along with our new friends from the excellent Redbourn club.  We very much concentrated on material about to be released on The Bite, plus a few new bits and pieces - and we got a lovely encore call.  This was a really lovely night.

One of the great pleasures of the evening was that we were supported by a phenomenal new talent, Marianne Neary.  As I understand it, Marianne has recently won a singer-song writing competition in London and, as part of that, been given a number of bookings at local folk clubs. For someone that has only played a few times in public and has just begun song writing, the quality of her material, the beauty of her singing and her outstanding stage presence mark her out as someone that the folk world should look out for.  If she chooses a career in folk music rather than following her PhD studies into a science career, this is a name that will make a mark – you heard it here first!!

We were kindly invited by Jan Strapp, the organiser at Redbourn, to join them for an evening of music to raise funds for Folk against Fascism, a movement aimed at ensuring that British folk music is not appropriated by the far right for its own purposes.  The club was pleasingly full to overflowing with those who wanted to participate, there were lots of new faces, many from the jazz world, that had come along also, and the music was stirring throughout the evening.  So great was the pressure on the programme, there was only room for us to do The Bite and Only Three Months, each in turn referring to the fight and the consequences of the fight against fascism in the Spanish Civil War. Well done to Jan and the others (who, I apologise, I don’t know by name) who put such an important and fun evening together.

This was our second evening at Folk in the Foyer, held on Friday evenings at the artsdepot in Barnet. Like last time we were there, there was a good crowd and some excellent floor spots – including an excellent bit of shanty singing – not just singing but a whole one-man act about setting sail -, a beautiful French folk song, and some great guitar work. 

Organiser JJ started the evening with three excellent numbers and, in our honour he played a version of Christy Moore’s La Quinta Brigada. Salud JJ – many thanks (oh! and we are very sorry about not being there for the sound check but there seemed to have been a breakdown in communication somewhere down the line. We will know for sure next time.)

We were given a 45 minute set and, despite this being a big space to fill, with an excellent p.a. system expertly set, we seemed to fill it.  Certainly the feedback after we came off was really warm and satisfying – thanks to everyone there!  We sold a lot of CDs and, indeed, were able to bring in some complete bystanders who were on their way home from a comedy show held elsewhere in the building, who were fulsome in their praise for the bit of our set they had seen.  We were fortunate to have some friendly faces in the audience and, again, Dan Garcia joined us and really helped fill out the sound.

In the recent round of gigs, it really does feel as though we are getting through to audiences.  It really couldn’t be more pleasing. Additionally, again with many thanks to organiser Jan Strapp, we noticed that our 17^th June gig at the Redbourn Folk Club is listed prominently in the flyer for the St Albans Folk Festival!  Thanks Jan, what a lovely thing to see ‘na-mara in Concert’.  I’ll raise a glass to that!

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.

There was a definite sense of an audience bolstered by French music enthusiasts and French teachers – so I hope they felt French with my Middlesbrough accent was decent enough!

With its programme normally coming from the world of classical music, playing an event like this was different for us – or at least for me; Rob has many years of involvement with the world of classical music.  This is a really wonderful facility put together by residents in Welwyn Garden City, using the Quaker Friends Meeting Hall as a venue.  Every month, they have Sunday afternoon concerts for the price of audience donations to a named charity. 

So, we were invited to play a forty minute set after a very talented cello duet and piano ensemble. Aware that this is a family occasion, Rob selected a programme with rather less death, destruction and ghosts than the normal set would have.  This is an audience with a very good critical ear – so, it was very satisfying to get the overwhelmingly positive feedback we were hoping for at the end of the session. As those who know us will testify, our repertoire is about stories and the ironies of the human condition – and, for most, they appeared greatly enthralled by the songs of loves requited and otherwise.  Again, it was very nice to have Dan Garcia playing with us, and with being so close to home, to see so many good friends and neighbours coming along to support us in what was a pretty packed hall.

Rob and I later went for drinks and snacks with the organisers and it was nice to hear about all of the various musical adventures – some including a cappella French singing – they were involved in (and a few bottles of very welcome London Pride...fast becoming a favourite tipple).

Blog post lost