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...