Dear all,
Thanks so much to everyone who ‘attended’ my gigs for Oxford Folk Weekend via Zoom and Stafford Live via Facebook. I had such a good time at both, the latter felt a lot like a virtual get together with Stafford chums while Oxford was a lovely experience as the app panned across various audience members clapping from their homes! To actually see an audience again was momentous!
A big thank you also to everyone who tuned in to UFQ TV week. We had a great time in the comments! Head over to our facebook page if you want to see what we did – a virtual gig, two live gigs, a live chat and…er…a cookery show. It was quite an experience and again very emotional too. Sadly it will be a long while I fear before we actually get to play together live again but this was a great way to plug the gap.
So what’s next – I’m live on Sunday thanks to Penrith Plug n Play who have been brilliant at carrying on their lovely gigs during lockdown. Open mic (excellent stuff) from 7 then I’ll be live at 8 for a full set. It’s in their facebook group but you don’t have to be a member or even have a facebook account – just head to https://www.facebook.com/groups/plugplay.email/
So what have I been doing? Well being a musician during lockdown is in many ways quite different from how I’d imagined. And not all in a bad way! It’s sort of pushed me to think about how I do my job in a different way. Skype teaching is the one thing that has remained unchanged and I have been extremely grateful for it! I’ve had to quickly learn how to edit video – I’m in the process of doing some split screen videos with other musicians. I’m also working on an online page of stuff you can subscribe to – I’ll keep you posted! Then I’ve been working on my new book of arrangements of Irish tunes, live streaming of course, writing music and writing arrangements for people. This latter one is something I’ve been doing since not long before lockdown and has been great fun. Someone asked me to arrange Beeswing by Richard Thompson and an old Mississippi John Hurt song…could be a lot worse!
I do of course miss seeing friends, having a pint down the pub, seeing family and of course live gigging and playing with my UFQ chums. I have good days and bad days but overall I’m just fine and I know am considerably luckier than many others. The support from you all in your messages, comments and tuning in to my ‘gigs’ has meant a lot and I am delighted to have brought some cheer with those performances.
Stay safe everyone,
Danjo x