St Albans Folk Club

Played St Albans Folk Club tonight and were very well received. We’d spoken with organiser Alison MacFarlane a couple of weeks earlier and she’d invited us down to support the local Bedfordshire duo Life and Times. Alison played a nice mix of whistle and melodeon tunes. Life and Times, who we hadn’t met before, did a set of their contemporary songs of Bedfordshire life written in the traditional vein. They are embarked on a terrific project and we wish them well.

Given the relatively low key nature of the night, we took the opportunity to try out some new material we’ve been developing since the CD was launched. Although we started with Maid of Culmore off the album – just to get Rob’s fingers a-jiggling, we quickly moved on to a dance tune that Rob has been working on called Persian Ricardo (why does the title lend itself to a Scouse pronunciation?).

We followed up with a song we’ve taken and translated from the work of the 1970s French band Malicorne, which we are calling ‘When I Took my Horse to Water’. The reception we got encourages us both to continue with our current researches into the French traditional scene.

Then, breaking from the traditional mood of the evening, we did a song written by Paul’s mate, Fraser Hardman, when he and Paul were together at university in Scotland – in the late Jurassic period when dinosaurs roamed the land. The song is called ‘You came to me in Sunshine’ and the small but appreciative audience really loved it and talked to us a lot about it, after the performance. Indeed, a couple of tourists filmed the whole performance so, somewhere in Latin America, we could be famous by now!

Finally, we finished off with another addition to our repertoire. Taken from the Irish a cappella singing trio, The Voice Squad, we did a rendition of the ballad Willy Taylor. Rob was really motoring by now and we took it at a hell of a lick, and people responded to it very well. Paul even remembered all the words.

But, the really fun part of the evening was talking with Life and Times and the audience afterwards and getting the feedback. We have had a lot of nice things said about the CD but we haven’t, to date, done a huge amount together live. The nice things said to us make us very positive about visiting the various clubs in the local area.

Home Recording with Andy

We spent Sunday afternoon with our mate Andy Garretty who has been building up a little studio in his house in St Albans. An excellent guitar player in his own right, Andy agreed to record three tracks for the website. It’s nice to hear a decent recording of work in progress so that one can think about how to improve it in the studio proper.

The three tracks we recorded are new since the CD and are called ‘When I Took My Horse to Water’, ‘You Came to Me in Sunshine’ and ‘Willy Taylor’.

Once Andy has finished editing them, we’ll be adding them to the site for everyone to hear. He made an excellent recording of our efforts and was very forgiving when Rob knackered his window by breaking the handle in half – honest accident, none of Rob’s alcoholic concoctions to blame.