Wow!

Hello world! Well, how good can a weekend of gigs get? We played at the lovely Teign House Inn, Christow, Devon on Friday night for their beer and music festival. What a fun evening that was. And one of the friendliest pubs to be found anywhere with a great landlord, Pete. Beautiful setting with camping available on site. We played in an old army tent - great sound and atmosphere. Then Saturday night at The Beggars Fair. Just brilliant. What an audience! Some of them started arriving at 5.30pm saying 'Well, we wanted to be sure of a good place!'. You could hardly move in the The Abbey Hotel for the crowd and the heat but it was a scorching night in every way! We LOVE The Beggars Fair. Please keep inviting us! Then, possibly one of our most unexpectedly pleasurable gigs of the year so far at Dorchester Arts on Sunday for their new Sunday Sessions. Tiny little venue all whitewashed and soft lighting with just a great vibe. This is a new venture for Dorchester Arts and to be honest we thought we'd be lucky to get a few people through the door. But, John Bullock and team had done a great job promoting it and the place was packed. The organisers had to rush off and print more tickets and I don't think you could have comfortably got any more people in! This was a very different gig for us. Very stripped down and mellow with Keith on African drum and cajon and no big kit. Well, the audience was so palpably warm towards us from the offset. And we started off really mellow and laid-back, playing many songs that we don't always get chance to do and a real mixture of some of our older material and some brand new songs from our forthcoming album. Of course, we did include lots of our up-tempo, numbers like Hangman's Daughter, When Will We be Married?; Rock it! etc but we also did Song For a Boy; Alice and Follow Me Down with Malcolm doing some lovely twiddly acoustic guitar. And it did kind of end up a bit of a party! For a mellow, stripped down, acoustic gig it was quite bonkers by the end with the audience clapping along madly to the Raggle Taggle Gypsy and singing This Time with huge gusto then stamping their feet and thumping the table for more! Every second of playing for such an appreciative audience was a joy. Bands like us need venues like that. So, people, if you're anywhere in the Dorchester area get along there and support it! Going to sit in the sun now with a cuppa tea and enjoy the after glow! xx