8th February 2009 Readifolk, Reading Folk Club

As we have said elsewhere in this blog, Reading Folk Club has been incredibly generous to us over the years. They were the first to give us any sizeable slot on a folk evening, the first to give us a ‘full booking’ and the first to give us a second full booking.
So, after a January of working on some new material and getting ourselves properly rested, then properly rehearsed, we were very much looking forward to the evening – at Readifolk’s new venue, The RISC Centre in London Street in the centre of Reading (which is the third venue we have played at, and very much the nicest.) The Reading hosts were as welcoming as ever. Sadly, the appalling weather in the previous week and on the evening itself meant that the audience was lower than they usually manage.
We had some excellent floor acts on before us – including some excellent French songs and tunes. When Rob and I started our ‘project’ of taking French and Breton songs and making them more accessible to an English speaking audience, we thought we would be pretty much alone in this – but far from it. There are many players playing French tunes and even performing French songs.
We took the opportunity to introduce two more new songs to our repertoire, developed over the Christmas and New Year period. Of late, I have become very enamoured of the French Canadian band Le Vent du Nord (if you haven’t heard them, track them down!!) and I have translated their song Les Larmes Aux Yeux – which has a wonderful but tricky instrumental tune embedded in it, written by the superb Scottish fiddler Fiona Cuthill. Rob, in his inimitable challenging style felt that we definitely needed one of the verses sung in French – so, this is what we have done. So, this is a tricksy, full on, number requiring total concentration – but the song and the tune are great – and the Reading audience were very appreciative.
The other song we introduced was a song that I have been working on for a long while but really only got a grip on when it was converted over into a DADGAD version; it is The Child Mother - which is a translation of a La Bamboche song sung by Evelyne Girardon. In our quest for variation in the act, we always try and vary the combinations of instruments we play, and try and get different sounds. In this particular song, I play my Taylor in DADGAD, and Rob drinks a pint of lager – yes, it’s me on ‘me tod’. Nice to say then, that the Readifolk audience really appreciated this somewhat harrowing song about a girl who becomes pregnant and, in desperation, kills her newborn and is then discovered.
Thanks to all at Readifolk for a lovely evening and such a warm welcome. We very much hope to be back. Thanks also to Clare who gave us such a wonderful write-up in the (excellent and professionally produced Readifolk newsletter, see http://www.readifolk.org.uk/Readifolk_NL2.pdf