Evesham Arts Centre was the second arts centre in the tour and the first time we played in Evesham. A lovely, if slightly hot venue, with a great bunch of people making it work. We then travelled to a more local gig at Newhampton Folk Club in Wolverhampton to support Bob Fox, who has a lovely voice and a great way of setting the scene for his songs with stories and anecdotes. He sung a traditional Northumbrian folk song called 'Dance Ti Thy Daddy' also known as 'When the Boat Comes In', which grandparents would sing to their grandchildren when bouncing them on their knees. This was a revelation to Char, who thought (shamefully) that it was the theme tune to the Youngs Salmon advert on television... We’re hoping to play there again at some point in the future as it’s a great folk club with a consistently impressive line up of artists performing. We then travelled over to the Bell at Leominster which is usually quite an eventful venue for us, with drunk Dutch people and erratic dancers who refer to Sarah as ‘brilliant young girlie’, but it turned out to be relatively normal Tuesday night.
The following Thursday we returned to The Retreat in Ledbury, where we were very privileged to play in front of their beautiful new back cloth made by the hugely talented Angie Hughes. It always surprises us how late the audience turns up on a Thursday night in Ledbury, they seem to be nocturnal...
The Autumn Tour moved onto Callow End Village Hall on Halloween night and another opportunity to hook up with Beck Sian, which was fab! Donned in skeleton outfit (see here for a photo) and armed with small skeletons called Geoff, Beck played quite a few new tunes off her newly released album ‘Luminous Wings and Unseen Things’ The ‘bones added some backing vocals to ‘Mr Crow’ emphasising to the few people who ask why we don’t sing, why we DON’T sing...