Na Mara at Goring Unplugged, 24th November 2006

Risking life and limb to travel the M25 on an early Friday evening, we set off en route to deepest darkest Oxfordshire to play at Goring Unplugged. We had been told about the club by an old friend who lives in this most beautiful little town. And, like many journeys into unknown parts, there was indeed a treasure at the end of it. This is a really great little club. It meets once a month and, if you live anywhere remotely near it, you should try and find out more about it and go along.

There is lots of pressure for playing spots in this club and the standard of the musicianship is extremely high. We were honoured to be asked to end the evening - either that or the organisers just thought that it might take us until 10.30pm to actually get there.

This is an exciting and modern club. Our material was ptretty much the only traditional material through the evening and was well appreciated by a sizeable audience (even though they usually get twice that number.) The music spanned everything from the superb classical arrqangements of traditional tunes by the very gifted Carla Maria Zapatelli, the Texan Swing music played the learned professor Andy Baum, to some truly blistering blues played by The Smack Boys - if you see their name anywhere, you should go.

The truly great thing about the club is that they are also very accommodating to young acoustic musicians from the twon. A small group of very talented youngsters played a boisterous set and were roundly applauded for doing so.

The organisers were extremely welcoming, the venue - the Village Hall - exrtremely cosy, especially for a cold and wet November evening. We stuck to our recent set of a little French, a little English and a little Irish.

The only downside of the evening was, after all that fun, was setting off back around the M25. Still, Rob likes to do the driving which means that I can have a gottle of geer. (neither of us drink before playing - we must be the only folk musicians for whom playing gigs is a slimming aid.