We've just come back from a mini tour of the North of England, the
highlight of which for me was playing in Ye Olde Man and Scythe in
Bolton (my home town) with my Dad in the audience. What a great pub! John
Jewitt the landlord (pictured with me) holds live music nights every
Saturday and we supported Phil Mellish and his acoustic trio as part of
Bolton Food and Drink Festival- I suppose we did drink a bit! We went
down well with the regulars and the men reserved a special whoop for
Mark's musical saw playing- very practical Bolton men. We made some new
friends including David (pictured). It was a shame we couldn't stay till
the 15 October when John renacts the be-heading of the Seventh Earl of
Derby - I hope you get your head in the basket this time John!
Before that we'd played at The Cornerhouse in Manchester on the Friday, then on the Sunday we headed off to Leeds and recorded two songs and a radio
interview with BBC Radio Leed's Russell Walker. It was great to be in the studio and
have a chat. We'll keep you posted on when the interview goes out.
After an unplanned tour of Leeds' one way system we did a set at The Mixing
Tin and played with The Avenues, who were fab fab fab. They love playing
together and though some of their lyrics cover the darker shades their
three part harmonies and melodies were full of sunshine and playfulness.
Hopefully we'll play with them again when they come down to London. Anna
also added her stupendous whistling ability to our set this time- blimey
she's good.
I've never seen someone do a beat box, sing and play the guitar very fast (sucessfully) but L-Mo did this at Santiago's and was fantastic. We were a bit knackered by the time we got to do our set at 12.30 but it was worth it to play in a smokey spaced out way to a load of smokey spaced out people, you could have heard a butterfly, the gain on the mic was so high and we really went with the chilled out chamber music vibe.
I hope we see some of our new friends when we next come up North, including Kate at the Cornerhouse, who made us feel so welcome and sorted out the pa for us. Cheers and thanks very much.
Rosemary
