Creeping Bentgrass Christmassy Car Club Concert!

Thursday 14 December 2017. All awash with alliteration, no... that's it. I'm not going to be able to keep that up... Thursday night saw us battling torrential rain and hail in Fleetwood as we set up in the Cricket Club to perform at the Christmas Party of a local Classics Car Club.

We have played for this club several times in the past and strangely, whenever prizes for the best car are handed out, the judges have always managed to overlook my Mazda... However, no prizes tonight as the order of the day is to celebrate Christmas and have a party!

I'm trying out my new American Professional Fender Stratocaster for the first time at a gig tonight and it sounds lovely and is a perfect match for the old faithful cherry red guitar.

A surprise visit from Father and Mrs Christmas and... surely that's not a reindeer...!

New Guitar

Recently I was in Newcastle and whilst there saw an absolutely beautiful guitar. I came back without it, but it played on my mind so much I had to do something about it.

I went to Rimmers Music in Blackpool and described the guitar to them. With a bit of searching on t'internet I managed to get the full details and they placed a special order for me.

It has now arrived!

To see and hear it in action, check out our gig list for public performances or get in touch and book us for your own event!

Accoustic Track

The closest on stage we get to being an accoustic band is when I'm playing the keyboard live and Bob is playing either accoustic guitar or mandolin. Even then they are plugged into the PA instead of being microphoned - that's a lot of hassle and usually gives us feedback problems.

But on our albums there's normally at least one track where instruments are recorded the good old way.

This afternoon I've laid down no less than 5 accoustic guitar tracks for the Beatles song "I've Just Seen a Face". We do it live but I'd be playing the Strat and Bob his bass. So - something a little bit different on the way!

I've been incredibly busy at work - the album is taking a long time! But it will be a good one folks, or if not then it won't be through lack of effort!

Preparation for a Gig

Tonight is a St Patrick's Night event as a fund-raiser for the Garstang Light Opera Group. Bob is busy playing a ceilidh somewhere with his other band, The Old School Band, so this one will be just David and myself.

However that's not the end of the story because as you can imagine, a light opera society will have its own fair share of talented people and many of them will "do a turn" tonight. Peter and Shelagh Cooney will join us on stage and perhaps do a couple of songs on their own. Shelagh features on our "Kites" album singing and playing penny whistle on "Fields of Athenry" and the harmonies always make the hairs on the back of my neck tingle even as I'm helping sing them!

Another close harmony group are "Cantabile", made up of four members of GLOG (as Garstang Light Opera Group call themselves).

David and I have a lot of new material that we are trying out tonight - I'm sure it will go down well and we have a full set of Irish music before the dance and rock and roll stuff inevitably takes over towards the end of the night!

I've spent the morning putting new strings on the guitars and breaking them in - brand new strings go out of tune for fun until they've been played for a bit. I've also finished off "Somebody Else's Girl" (see previous entry in the blog) and that's gone off to http://www.billyfury.com to be included (hopefully) in the April online album. You can play this month's album until the 31st and it includes one of my solo tracks, "Blue Bayou".

I'll post a report of the gig in a day or two!