A Wet Day at Myerscough

Well we've been playing Myerscough College's open day events for years but yesterday was the wettest one since our very first in 2002!

Despite that a phenomenal number of people braved the weather to come out to see everything that was going on, but understandably not a lot chose to sit on the row of chairs that had been placed in front of our spot! Some brave souls stood and listened, danced, sang and cheered and we thank you for that.

We played The Kink's Sunny Afternoon, but it failed to do the trick and so we resorted to Creedence Clearwater Revival's Have You Ever Seen the Rain which gave us a certain amount of audience participation...

We played it again several hours after the first playing and David related how someone had yelled "Sod off!" as they passed. Then he did a quick "oops!" and apologised for swearing but was then faced by a very indignant 5-year-old who tore him off a strip to the amusement of everyone around us. "There's lots of children here, you know!" she said, hands on hips. I promised to wash his mouth out with soap and she nodded and, with a final stern look, walked off back to her parents who were killing themselves.

The previous night we played out at Heskin Hall for a steam fair in a large marquee. It was good to hear Fran and Jeannie relate that they had heard someone at the entrance saying to his mates "Oh, great! They were here last year and they're fabulous!" A man of taste!

And yes, I know I'm supposed to be taking it easy because of the old ticker, but we cut down the set at Heskin from our usual 4+ hours and David keeps giving me dire threats if I start to set up or carry anything heavy before he's got there to help.

And finally, our thanks to Peter and Shelagh Cooney who came to Myerscough to do a set and give us a bit of a break. I appreciated it as I'd got a huge blister on one finger which burst and needed to dry up a bit before I could carry on. "Can you still play keyboards?" asked David. Relentless...

Garstang Music Festival

Today found us in Garstang in the same spot as last year, playing on Market Day for the Music Festival.

We had a great day and the paved area in front of us was filled for most of the day with people standing to listen on the street corners nearby.

Thanks to everyone who supported us and who contributed to the charity box. The ladies in the Council Office made very appreciative noises when we handed in a quite heavy box!

Also thanks to the many friends who turned up to support us and to listen and, in the case of Shelagh Cooney, to join us for a couple of songs!

Old Gigs, New Pix

For most gigs Fran takes some photos on a digital whilst Jeannie takes photos on film.

I've just got round to scanning Jeannie's last photos and there's a couple of them here.

How about this for a tent?

This is the marquee hired for the steam fair gig which was in aid of the charity Rainbow House, on 3 June. (See the original report here)

We've done these gigs, two a year for the past 3 years now and they are always a good night.

The second pic is of me filling in with Shelagh and Peter Cooney, our guest artists at the Myerscough College Open Day, the following day.

We thought it may be as well to give ourselves a break from singing after a full night and, indeed, we had a late night combined with an early morning which meant that over one 20 hour period we had been playing for 10 hours!

Shelagh, you may remember, contributed the haunting harmonies and penny whistle on "Fields of Athenry" on our 2004 "Kites" album.

Myerscough College Open Day

Ah... a brilliant day! The weather held off for us as we played our hearts out at Myerscough today. The rain hit with a vengeance as we were halfway home - now that's what I call a result!

We were feeling a bit fragile at first after last night - it was 2:00am when we got back and we were onsite at Myerscough for 9:00am! But once we started we were just on a roll!

We had lots of favourable comments, sold a few CDs, gave autographs and there may be a chance of a booking or two!

We had a guest slot as Peter and Shelagh Cooney joined us - Shelagh sings and plays penny whistle for us on "Fields of Athenry" on our "Kites" album and I joined them on guitar as they sang 3 or 4 songs early in the afternoon. Thoroughly enjoyed it too!

We worked out at one point that of the immediately past 20 hours we had played for 10 of them... We eventually had to stop when my fingers were so indented even despite all the layers of corn, that I was worried I might cause the hard skin to split! We finished with a blistering version of Johnnie B Goode and a chorus of shouts for more.

Many thanks if you stayed to listen, hope you enjoyed it as much as we did! A weekend off next week and then we have one a week for the next 4 weeks or so!

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!