The Thunderbolt

Our first gig with our new drummer David, and an ideal one to start him off with, as we were supporting a band from London called the Din, so we only needed a short, support-band length set. Nice venue, The Thunderbolt - good stage and PA, competent young chap on the desk and a very friendly landlord - looks like it could be a good night...

The Din aren't there yet when we show up, and apparently when they get here they're going to be using all our kit. Something of a departure from the norm, but we roll with it and get all our gear set up & soundchecked (normally the main band gets set up first, and the support get a line-check if they're lucky, so this suits us fine!).
Apparently this gig is an afterparty for the Totterdown Arts Trail, and there's a couple of other acts on the bill, a Singer/guitarist called Jim Evans, and the Shamena dance troupe. Sounds intriguing... my mind wanders back to a festival in Lechlade a couple of years back where we had a troupe of lissome young belly-dancers gyrating in front of us onstage as we tried desperately to concentrate on the serious business of playing music... happy days...
Jim Evans turns out to be a very good guitarist who does his own material, and does it very well - a nice bloke, too. As he finishes his soundcheck, three amply-proportioned women of, shall we say a 'certain age', enter the pub and order drinks. "Bet they're the belly-dancers!" whispers Jim...

You're one step ahead of me, I'm sure... oh yes, they were...

Aaanywaaay, moving swiftly on to our set - it was all going swimmingly until the second song, when Ruth's fiddle pickup decided to die, which meant that we had to do several songs without her while the Sound guy tried to fix it. In the end she was reduced to playing as close to a vocal mike as she could get the fiddle, which ain't ideal on many fronts. Still, on the plus side, the belly-dancers had pretty much cleared the place, so no-one minded.

The Din were a very friendly bunch, and very grateful for the loan of our gear - I felt a bit sorry for them though - they drove all the way from Camden for this, and were playing to about thirty people.
(Mind you, we've driven further, and played for less, before now..!)

Shameful neglect...

Well, this is a terrible state of affairs. I've neglected this blog to such an extent that I may well have been reported to the Royal Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Blogs. I can only attribute this to the creeping terror of Facebook, and try to catch up a bit...
No less than four gigs since the last update, the first of which back in September was at the Three Horseshoes in Bradford on Avon; a new venue for us, and on the basis of that gig one we'd very much enjoy doing again - good crowd, good sound, and free beer! Doesn't get much better than that... The one sour note came from a couple of tossers who were trying to pick a fight with me as we loaded the gear back in the van, but being as we all got out of there with our gear and teeth intact, no harm done.

Next up was this little free festival organised by UNISON, on the same weekend as Brisfest:

 This was a really well organised do, on a beautiful sunny day in Kingswood Park, featuring three bands plus speakers from the local union branchs and various Labour politicos, and something we were very pleased to be asked to do.

Sadly, it didn't appear as if anyone had publicised the day anywhere at all, as it seemed like the only people there were either from the union or friends and relations. I guess that being on the same weekend as the much bigger Brisfest didn't help, either. A real shame, as the speakers were pretty much preaching to the converted, and the bands (us, the Mystery Chords and the Smokestack Shakers) were playing to a few dozen people at best.
Still, hopefully some lessons were learned, and if anything similar comes up we'd certainly be happy to do it.

The following weekend, we were back in the Stag & Hounds in Old Market, Bristol - a lovely comfy muso pub, and a good turnout, with two support acts, Sam Whitlock & Mirielle Mathlener, who were both excellent. Rather a late night in the end, and great to see so many familiar faces, including some I hadn't seen in years!
Special thanks are due to my lovely wife for this one as well, for staying at home to look after the kids, as I managed to book this gig on our Wedding Anniversary without realising. Oops...

Skipping merrily through the fallen leaves into October, and our last gig was back in the Oxford in Totterdown, Bristol - last time we were in here, the place was packed, with something happening every weekend and a great vibe about the place, but this time was very subdued... nothing on the 'What's On' board, hardly any punters, and a distinctly dodgy feel about the whole thing. Turns out that the pub was struggling to get it's music licence renewed, thanks to the complaints of one local resident (why is it that people like that move next door to a pub in the first place, let alone one that puts on live music?), but since then, thanks to the only sensible bit of legislation that our current car-crash of a Government have passed, the laws on music licensing have been relaxed considerably, and the Oxford is now back on form, and hopefully we'll be back there sometime in the New Year.

When we do, it'll be with a new drummer; our stalwart skin-thumper for lo these past ten years, Nick Wood, is moving on to pastures new, and we're currently rehearsing with our new recruit David Fitch-Peyton, who was previously in Bristol 'Riot Grrrl' band Crash Paris. As has been pointed out by our old guitarist Mick, Riot Grrrl bands are generally composed of, well... Grrrls, so it's unclear what he was doing with them in the first place, but anyway their loss is our gain - his first gig with us is coming up in a few weeks, at the Thunderbolt in Bristol - looking forward to it!

Two festivals in a row...

Well that was a busy couple of weeks! Off to the Village Pump festival first, on its new site overlooked by the Westbury white horse, in Westbury country park - a great site, by the side of the old concrete works, which doesn't sound too scenic, but it somehow works...
Perfect weather as we rolled onto site on Saturday afternoon, and it kept up all weekend. Our set was due to start at midnight on Stage 2, so we had to be very well behaved and stay off the booze for most of the day. Some of us almost succeeded, too.
A very quiet, rather 'polite' vibe to the festival on Saturday, I thought, with most of the acts on both stages tending well towards the folkier end of the spectrum. Honourable mention must go to local band Penny Red, though, who performed on Stage 2 in the afternoon - great musicians, and the lead singer had a really unique voice, I reckon they'll go far. Show of Hands were great on the mainstage later, too.
Late that night, arriving backstage with the van full of gear, Chris was accosted by a security guard who had been told by a over-zealous steward that a "suspicious looking character" was heading backstage... Chris eventually managed to convince the bloke he was legit, while the rest of us helpfully fell about laughing.
Turned out there was a scheduling mix-up, and the band we thought were following us were in fact going on first... we weren't too keen on this, as we reckoned people would drift off back to the campsite while we were setting up, but in the event we needn't have worried - despite not taking to the stage until gone 1 a.m, we still had a packed hall of happily drunk & leaping-about people to play with, and they didn't want to let us go when we had to stop at 2.
Probably our best gig this year, and hopefully some decent photos will surface eventually - there were certainly enough large, expensive looking cameras going off during our set, I can only surmise that their owners haven't recovered yet!

The following Friday, and another late night beckons at the Farm Festival, near Bruton in Somerset.
We played here last year, and it couldn't be more different to the Village Pump in terms of music and clientele - much younger crowd, and music composed mainly of  'sounds wholly or predominantly characterised by a succession of repetitive beats'. Some of it might be dubstep. I wouldn't know. I don't care, frankly. Straight to the bar for a few pints of Black Rat cider, methinks...
We were initially due to play an hour-long set at 11 p.m. in the Battleground tent, but due to the fluid nature of festival scheduling (the band due on before us hadn't found their way there from Brighton yet), we ended up starting about an hour earlier than intended - never mind, the tent was packed, and by the end of the first song, they were all up & dancing - this was going to be a good 'un!
A few bars into our second song however, the fluid nature of festivals decided to give us some real trouble... all the sound and lights for the whole tent died, and there ensued much frantic scrabbling about with torches by the heroic soundcrew and lampies before electricity was restored to the PA after about 10 minutes.
We normally reckon that most gigs are improved by the addition of cider, but it turned out some twat had managed to pour some into the power distribution point, shorting the whole lot out... we managed to play one song in total darkness before the lights came back, but of course most of the crowd had wandered off by then, and it took most of the rest of our set to get them back - it was a great gig by the end of it, but could have been a whole lot better...

Busy, busy , busy...

Well, quite a few gigs under the belt since I last got around to updating this, starting off with a little do in Bathampton, in the grounds of the school back in June... we did this one last year, and it's a very well run village/school fete which was unfortunately blighted by rain this year (as has been pretty much every outdoor event in this excuse for a summer). Unlike last time we were under what looked like a substantial solid awning over the stage, but as the rain got going we and the soundcrew discovered that the awning was designed to keep small children shaded from the sun, not keep water off them. It leaked like a sieve.
Cue much running around and swaddling of equipment in binliners... all good fun, and the folks who braved the downpour and stuck around seemed to like us, so it was worth it in the end.
End of June we were back at the Oxford in Totterdown, my favourite music pub in Bristol, and a riotous crowd gave us the best reception we've ever had in there - crowd surfing included! It's always a sign of a good gig when at the end of the night you can see footprints on the ceiling. Ruth got so carried away she tripped and fell off a bit of stage, which caused her foot to swell up and go a funny colour. Not to worry though - as Rory McLeod commented the other night, it was probably just a stage she was going through...
Further disasters and calamities abounded at our last gig, a benefit for the Small Nations Festival, held in a rather posh community hall in Myddfai in Carmarthenshire, where we were supporting Rory McLeod. The weblinks for buying tickets had broken down, so the organisers only knew of half a dozen advance tickets sold, but happily there was a reasonable turn-out on the door. First on the bill was Andy Jones, who used to play with the Boys from the Hill back in the days when we were regulars at the Pontardawe International Folk Festival, and it was great to catch up with him again. Halfway through his first song, our Simon's guitar fell off a chair behind him and went crashing down behind the stage, causing poor Andy to jump out of his skin and stop, but it didn't put him off his stride too much.
Our set was distinctly odd... for a start we didn't have Nick the drummer with us, so had to do it in an  'unplugged' style, which we swiftly concluded didn't really work... Simon's guitar took yet another nose-dive down the back of the stage (though remained miraculously undamaged) and Chris managed to completely forget the opening chords to a song we've been playing for 20 years... all in all, not one of our best, I'd have to say, though we seemed to go down well and the organisers want us to play the Small Nations Festival next year. Maybe it sounded better than we thought...
Luckily Rory McLeod seemed unaffected by all the poltergeist activity - for about 5 minutes, anyway, until he knocked his drink all over the stage... then towards the end of his set, he broke a string, and couldn't see to restring it, until a lovely little old lady in the audience gave him her reading glasses..! Rory was great though, an amazing showman, and one of the best harmonica players I've ever seen to boot. He's also a thoroughly nice bloke, which is always a relief when you meet someone of his stature. Quite a few musicians have a reputation for being, shall we say, a bit of a knob when you meet them...

The Fox, Broughton Gifford

Well, we’ve found a new Favourite Pub – the Fox in Broughton Gifford, where we played a beer festival last weekend. We used to play here donkeys years ago, when we were all crammed into a small portioned-off space facing the bar, and we gave up on it in the end, but it’s now under new ownership, and what’s more there’s a beer festival on, and it's the start of a double Bank Holiday! Something to do with the Queen, apparently... at around the time we started, she was 'enjoying' JLS and Jessy J at her bash in London. Lucky, lucky her...
The rain came down in stair-rods from the minute we arrived, but we were in a nice big marquee, as were a good couple of hundred very good-humoured punters, and we had a top night. Lovely free food, and free beer all night, too! Oh, what merry boys and girls we were by the end of the night… many thanks to the guv’nor, and when’s the next one?

Onwards & upwards...

Once more I've let things slip... a very busy few weeks, kicking off back in April with Simon's first gig with us, a private do for the local Moto Guzzi owners club over in Pewsey, on a horrendously wet & windy evening. We arrived to find dozens of beleaguered bikers attempting to prevent their tents and personal effects from flying over the fields, but at least the barn we were playing in was solid and watertight, and a good time was had by all. Didn't envy them camping out overnight though...

The next weekend was another visit to the Horseshoe Inn in Bowlish, where after careful consideration of what happened last time, I elected to drive there and back, and thus avoid the temptations of the cider festival they had on. Probably just as well, on the whole. I like cider, but it doesn't agree with me. In fact it disagrees so strongly I've been known to pick fights with myself after a few pints of the stuff.

The following weekend, we were back in the Plough in Manston - not been here for a while, and I swear it's in a little Bermuda Triangle or something... it took me 2 hours to find my way there from Bristol... perhaps it's time to get a SatNav after all. Always a nice sound in here and a good response, though Simon took some convincing of this, being unused to the genteel crowd of diners that are always there when we arrive, many of whom admittedly don't have the look of avid folk-rock fans... turned out nice as always, though, and good to see Elodie and Mildly Alarming Dave there again.

Up to the end of May, and a ridiculously short set at the 2nd Lechlade Festival - 20 minutes, which hardly seemed travelling all that way for really, especially as the baking heat had rendered the Sunday afternoon audience, such as it was, pretty much comatose. The only shade on site was provided by an enormous inflatable Bar the size of a swimming pool, which promptly collapsed when the generator pumping in the air failed. Cue rapid exodus of punters as the roof sagged down and left the whole structure looking like a stranded jellyfish... they finally got it up again after about an hour, whereupon it collapsed again halfway through our set. That's progress for you.

On the plus side, we did get some much-needed decent photos out of it, and we got to slip off for a pint at a lovely riverside pub and watch teenagers tombstoning off the bridge, narrowly avoiding swans and boats... ah, the folly of youth!

No gigs for ages, then 3 at once!

Falling badly behind on updating this, been 3 gigs since  the last entry! First up was the Oxford in Totterdown, back in mid February. Second time in this venue, and it’s apparently going from strength to strength, plenty of people still prepared to turn out to see original music & drink good beer – a winning formula if ever there was one.

Next one was St Patricks night, at the Rolleston in Swindon. Back in the nineties there was a brief trend for Oirish theme pubs, when every local seemingly got renamed as 'Finnegans Wake' or the like, and filled with agricultural machinery, copper bedpans, rusty Guinness ads and badly poured stout. They all wanted live music with some tenuous connection to the Auld Country, and what with Ruth’s family connection and the trad Irish tunes that were weaved into our songs we did pretty well out of it for a few years, and played identikit plastic Irish pubs from Soho to Southport.

On one occasion we turned up to the opening of a new place in Nottingham called 'Behan’s Bar', to be greeted with an enormous banner declaring “Tonight! Ruth Behan and the Brew Band!” Great gig as I recall, and they put us all up in a hotel too. Them were the days…

The fad for Irish pubbery has long gone now, along with most of the pubs, but St Patricks is still a moneyspinner for the breweries, and Irish bands still get good work out of it. We’re no longer by any stretch of the imagination an Irish band, but this gig at the Rolly was billed as an ‘Alternative St Patricks night’, which covered us nicely. Went down well, too, with a good lively crowd, none of whom seemed to mind that they didn’t recognise any of the songs, apart from one somewhat over-refreshed lady with a Guinness tophat  and unfocussed eyes who kept yelling for “When Irissh Eyessh are Schmiling..!” Not going to happen, love.

Latest outing was the George in Bradford on Avon, home of the genial Darren, who kindly let us use his PA which was all set up from the previous night, which saved us a lot of bother, and also served to show up the inadequacies of our own one, which to be fair has given nigh on 15 years service to the cause, and probably deserves to be put out to grass. Or sent to the glue factory. All we need now is the cash… oh well, as the old saying goes, what do musicians do when they win the Lottery? Keep gigging till the money runs out…

In other news our search for a new guitarist has finally borne fruit, in the shape of Simon Heptinstall, a really rather good guitarist from Atworth, who is currently tearing his hair out trying to learn 35 songs in time for our next gig at the end of April...

The Horseshoe, Bowlish

So, the first gig of 2012 last Saturday at the Horseshoe in Bowlish, Shepton Mallet, and also our first gig as a four-piece following our Mick's decision to leave for personal reasons a few weeks ago. A real shame that, and I don't know where we'll find a replacement with anything like as much talent, but until we do we'll soldier on regardless - there's a good load of gigs stacked up for 2012 already, although our plans for recording will have to go on hold for the time being.
We were lucky that the four of us made it to this one, as snow was settling on ungritted roads right across Somerset, and I nearly left the road several times on the way to meet the others, at one point going downhill in a barely-controlled slide past dozens of cars stuck trying to go uphill...
Once in the van though, the sheer weight kept us anchored (fairly) securely to the road and we arrived in one piece, although as Chris observed "If you think I'm driving back tonight, you've got another think coming..."
Landlady Stephanie was very pleased to see us, as it was her birthday do, and the night went off very nicely indeed, the beer flowed merrily late into the night, and in the small hours the Landlord started a whisky tasting session that nearly crossed from hospitality into hospitalisation... I think it was the 46% English whisky that did for me in the end (nothing to do with the previous six, or all those pints of Butcombe, oh no), but by all accounts I suddenly decided it was time to retire for the night and collapsed to the floor like a chainsawed Redwood (oh alright, a small Christmas tree), luckily managing to hit a mattress on the way down...

 I awoke in the cold light of dawn to find my face inches from Nick the drummer's, surrounded by a fuggy miasma of whisky fumes and pork scratchings, and snoring like a bandsaw.

Whimpering piteously, I crawled to the kitchen in search of a kettle, and as I looked out of the window I could see the snow had all melted - we could go home.

Damm... ;-)
http://www.thehorseshoebowlish.co.uk/

It's 2012, you can come out now...

So, as the cleansing rain of 2012 blasts the pavements clean of the puddles of vomit left behind by the last amateur drinkers of 2011, a whole new diary lies empty and pristine, with very few gigs in it as yet...
One place we do know we'll be back in is the Oxford in Totterdown, Bristol - scene of our last gig of 2011 a couple of weeks ago, and a great way to end the year it was too; rather like the Stag & Hounds, this is a good sized pub that has recently been turned into a music venue by someone with real commitment to live music, who actually knows what they're doing. Proper stage, lights & PA, lots of wood and sofas, something happening every night, and most importantly lots of people jumping about!
A real pleasure to do, and we'll be back no less than three times in 2012, so they must have liked us too.

We're hoping to do some more recording this year, as there's a backlog of songs building up we really need to get down... just need to work out how we can afford it! Meanwhile, time to start filling up that diary a bit...