Dear all,
It’s been a rather breathless time of it all and there’s no let up any time soon! The tour has been fantastic and I’m loving life on the road and it’s been great to play at, for the most part, full houses and sell loads of CDs. It’s pretty full on though and my mileage has been nothing short of outrageous and my sleep deprivation is quite considerable! Thank god things calm down after this…oh wait.
Anyway, a bit of a report on my gigs:
05/03 – Unicorn Theatre, Abingdon – Oh my god! What a venue! What a venue! A beautiful and extremely old theatre with stunning acoustics. Added to which the crowd were lovely, CD sales were phenomenal and the host Geoff was just about the nicest guy you could ever meet. A wonderful night.
06-07/03 – Moonbeams March Weekend, Driffield – What a cracking little festival! Really enjoyed my sets and nice to catch up with some old faces. Discovery of the year in Plumhall too whose song ‘Never Forget My Name’ is a truly stunning song.
08/03 – Folk On The Moor, Plymouth – Lovely little gig this and packed to the rafters! Lovely.
11/03 – Housmans, Church Stretton – Great little place this and always any excuse to see the grandparents!
13/03 – Woodman Folk Club, Kingswinford – Great club and absolutely heaving! A great night.
14/03 – Great Broughton Village Hall, Tees (with Alistair Anderson) – Always a privilege to play with the man himself and he was on his usual sparkling form.
17/03 – Gatehouse Theatre, Stafford – Where do I start? A really special night for me in my hometown. I broke my record for CD sales at a solo gig too!
18/03 – Llantrisant Folk Club, Pontyclun – Really this was a first trip to this part of the world. Good fun and excellent wine at my hosting. Best of all I had a lie in the next morning!
19/03 – Ritz Acoustic Club, Burnham on Sea (with Christi Andropolis) – What a joy to play with this lovely lady again, a truly awesome talent. We had a great time and always a pleasure to be at this venue.
20/03 – Forge, Basingstoke (with Christi Andropolis and Nic Zuppardi) – Bit of a trio gig this time, or indeed a whole trio gig. Nice crowd and much fun had with two blinding musicians.
21/03 – Melting Pot, Redruth – So Cornwall is a long way from everywhere. But it was totally worth it at this little gem of a venue and best of all a long overdue catch up with some old chums.
22/03 – The Bell, Bath – The Bell. It’s the best (apart from Market Vaults of course). Long set and even some spoons accompaniment on the last song.
And that roughly brings me up to date. Once again, I’m the twat with the laptop this time in Faversham while Andy Perkins the banjo doctor works on my banjo. That always sounds wrong. Oh well.
One of the fun things about this tour and album release has been umpteen radio appearances. But one thing that does happen rather a lot when I’m on tour is I end up bloody early for everything thus become the twat with a laptop in cafes and pubs. In Bristol the other day I took great pleasure in having a rather stunning chilli hot chocolate from an independent cafe whilst simultaneously using Starbucks free wifi. I also ended up in Wrexham earlier this week doing Live Music Now work for a couple of days. Again, I ended up with some time to kill so went to Morrisons cafe which by the way did a remarkably good fried breakfast. Anyway I appreciated that. I rather less appreciated the man showing me photos on his phone and asking me if I thought they were hot. But rather more unexpected was the man who asked me quite bluntly in a motorway service station if I was planning on going to the toilet so he could steal my laptop.