Cambridge Folk Club, 29th May 2009

We were honoured by another terrific night at the Cambridge Folk Club. We shared the bill with the extremely talented Richard Brown and Carl Hogsden, and the Marina Florance band. Marina played with four others and delivered a very beautiful, entertaining and upbeat session.

I am very pleased to report that our 50 minute set was very well received and there were strong calls for an encore at the end. We introduced two new songs into the set. The first was Broken in the Past - a homage to the suffering of refugees now and through the ages, which uses the tune from the traditional French Canadian song Le Vieux Cheval, first heard by the magnificent Le Vent du Nord, but with words penned by myself. The second was Nellie Torrence and Jeannie Waldie - a tale of the first known true body snatchers in Edinburgh, which is a na-mara original. Having remembered the words (! - through a lot of private rehearsal), both songs seemed to go down well.

We played some of our better known song, including When I Took my Horse to Water, and even had some in the audience singing it along with us - a great feeling.

We had a lot of very good feedback at the end of the night and were still talking as the last of the chairs were being cleared away. We were also very pleased to hear that Cambridge will be offering us a full booking in 2010. This is very generous - they have supported and encouraged us all the way through from when we turned up a long time ago to do two songs, then to do 20 minutes, then a couple of showcases, then to share the bill last night and, now, to give us a full slot! And, of course, they have asked us to play the Folk Club tent at the Cambridge Folk Festival which we are over the moon about.

The drive home flew by and, not drinking before we play, and the bar being shut by the time we had finished, I had a self-congratulatory bottle of beer when I got in. But, I was still home before my daughter, who came in and we had a nice long chat while I quaffed my Innes & Gunn beer (highly recommended!!)