Thanks to Ross Scrivener

Just a brief note to thank Ross Scrivener of the Barton Le Clay Folk Club for sending us through some of the excellent video material taken from their all day charity folk event held in Barton in late June this year. Ross and his friends at Barton had obviously lavished a great deal of care and attention on making a nice video product from the day, and it is something that Rob and I are very grateful to receive. Ross has also been very happy to let us put this material onto our MySpace site - and I have now given it to Craig at Rightback Records for putting on the site. Again, many thanks Ross - and all best wishes to Barton.

Redbourn Folk Club, 11th October

Our final current booking of this short 'season' was to support Bill Whaley and Dave Fletcher, at the Redbourn Folk Club.

Redbourn is a very friendly club run by Jan Strapp who plays hammer dulcimer beautifully. We had been along to the club in our early, more nervous days, and had been very encouraged and pleased to be invited back to do this support role. Thankfully, having had a couple of good outings recently, and concentrating on a relatively fixed set for a while, we felt much more confident and strong this time around, and I think, did a very good set. The evidence for this is that Jan has intimated getting us back for a full spot at the club in 2008, which is really gratifying and indicates to us the progress we are making - so, thanks to Jan for that.

We also had the chance to meet Bill Whaley and Dave Fletcher. I confess I didn't know their music before but will listen out for them from now on. Excellent songs, modern and traditional, voice (and what a voice Dave has!) and squeeze boxes of various sorts - including an electric concertina that can do anything and a harmonium. Bill exhibits a very dry humour and gruff exterior when on stage but is, as is obvious to all really, a very friendly bloke indeed, as is Dave.

We were accompanied by our friend Robert who was able to give us a bit of a critical review, which is what we like to have. And, of course, the benefit of Redbourn for us is that it is 10 minutes and home.

Baldock and Letchworth, 3rd October 2007

This was the first of two support slots in quick succession. Here, with our good friends at the Baldock and Letchworth Club (which given our links to Alan and Sue Hewson of Tam Lin and Millrace) feels increasingly like a home club for us, we were supporting the Seattle-based pairing of Pint and Dale. Rob's oldest son came along to give us moral support, and help carry the increasing number of instruments we seem to be playing these days.

The format at B&L is that the support act starts the evening - which is nice because it means you can relax and really enjoy the main act and maybe even have drink after performing.

Pint and Dale play a great array of mainly nautically themed music. Pint is a great guitarist, sporting a Thompson-esque beret, Dale plays an array of instruments, including the Hurdy Gurdy. In their earlier days, they used to do French music, clearly something close to our heart - but it seems that has dropped out of their repertoire. But they did a great session and were very friendly people to meet.

Planning and playing, late September, early October 2007

We have a couple of important support gigs to do, so not surprisingly Rob and I are rehearsing a lot at the moment. The set went very well in Cambridge and, for the moment, we are going to stick to that and then, when back from holidays and business commitments in late October, then move on to the next stage in development. We are also doing quite a bit with Tam Lin - so, we are certainly very busy.

We also took the chance to meet up with Craig from our record company Rightback Records, and plan the next phase of work we might do with them. This was the first time I had met Craig, but Rob knows him very well. We had an excellent meeting in a great pub near London Bridge station and Craig introduced us to the work that he had been doing for us on MySpace. I have now followed up on this and, with the held of a friends teenage daughter, I have been introduced to the universe that is MySpace - oh, my God! What a fantastic resource. In 30 minutes, Becky helped me understand how one builds material on the site. About 4 hours later, I surfaced after pursuing some fantastic Asturian and Galician bands I had never heard of. I even sent an e-mail to Evelyne Girardon to try and make a first contact with a true heroine of mine. This is an amazing technology for exploring music. Get on there, check us out; check our 'friends' links out. Between us, over the coming months, Rightback and ourselves aim to build a much richer site, with videos etc. Old dog - new tricks, pah!

Laxfield Festival of Tolerance, 22nd September 2007

Not long after the exhilaration of playing at Cambridge, we had an early morning, up and at 'em trip back eastwards to Suffolk - the furthest east we've played - to the small and very beautiful village of Laxfield.

Some 450 years ago, a Protestant preacher was martyred in Laxfield and, as the name suggests, this event is there to promote religious and philosophical tolerance - which seems the right thing for us to be supporting. Naturally, it also has a Tudor flavour.

Na-mara had been recommended to the organisers to play the festival by an old friend of ours, Bob Kidby of the excellent London-based jazz combo Clarence and the Regents. We had done some charity work with them in London in recent years and we know the band well. So, we set off to have lunch with Bob and the rest of the band, after meeting up with our great friend Tony Garrity, Suffolk's shyest bodhran player. We were to play a couple of 40 minute slots in the afternoon in the acoustic tent, as the crowds were milling through and around, to be followed by a thirty minute slot on the main stage in the big tent before Clarence and the Regents began.

The event, skilfully put together by Simon Gallo - an events organiser based in Laxfield and doing probably a thankless task, gratis -was an excellent day out. The weather was great. Our afternoon sessions were, in a way, live rehearsal. People passed by, listened for a few numbers, took the kids for an ice-cream, wandered on; that sort of thing. Very nice; no pressure - adn it showed, we did a nice couple of sets. We interspersed with a professional band of Tudor musicians, the delightful Passo mezzo - playing weird and wonderful Tudor instruments, in Tudor costume, to very great effect! My coat might have looked as though it had been around from Tudor times, but I can confirm it was modern really.

We then left Laxfield after the afternoon session for a bit of a rest before the evening performance - we are getting on a bit now you know.

When we returned to set up for the main stage, we found that the organisers had put an itinerary together of local young adults rock bands - to get the evening really going. So, picture two folkies of a certain age, watching with some alarm at the prospect of following some excellent young rock bands pounding away to a mosh pit full of their friends yelling and shouting. "Hmm, I bet this lot like a sea shanty or two" was not a thought that came to mind. Thankfully, when it came our turn to go on, there was a ten minute break while the roadies set up the equipment for Clarence and the Regents. In that time, the youngsters drifted off to the darker corners of the village to do what youngsters have done at village fairs for centuries (if folk songs are to be believed!), and a new audience filtered into the main tent. However, Rob and I decided that this was still not the place for slow and tearful ballads; rather, we should rip it up a bit with some fast Asturian tunes and some of our faster songs...and it worked well. We even had bits of the audience out dancing and jigging around. It all went down very well. Simon and Bob were really happy with the set and we got some excellent feedback from Tony - who, in the end, we couldn't persuade to come and join us.

So, we went and had a complementary burger - we live the high life you know - and watched the superb Sally from Clarence and Regents get the crowd going and then we turned for the long journey home. What a great day - we made a lot of new friends, saw some old friends and had a wonderful day out - I can't think of a better reason to do this stuff, can you?