This weekend, courtesy of the lovely Derek and Mary, saw our four man format complete two missions, as our first ever contribution to Banbury Folk Festival. On Friday night, a 30 mile round journey outward saw us arrive (on time!) at Drayton Leisure Camp site, on the outskirts of the town. Here, most of (all of?) the Happy Campers were assembled. Not literally, because some had pitched tents and lowered the steadies on their Avondales and then taken the shuttle bus into town. But a small but perfectly formed crowd had assembled in the clubhouse to hear an assortment of singers-and us-entertain them.
Using Malc Gurnham's previous route, we managed successfully to chop a few minutes off the journey on Friday night, by sneaking off the A423 and doing a bit of Rally Cross via Hanwell. This meant we arrived on time at the soon-to-be rationalised Drayton Leisure site. Sobering to think that somewhere in those fields, Malc Gurnham's Winnebago was probably tethered. ( Malc was unable to guest on bass with us that night, (as he did last time we visited Drayton), because he had sensibly bagged the plum job of compering the Main Concert in The Town Hall. Featuring Isla St Clair, Linda Watkins and John Tams with Barry Coope, it looked a good line-up. I expect he'll boast all about it when we hook up with him next week.
As we were on time, I even managed to try the Hook Norton, obtain a programme, and buy a Festival t-shirt before getting to the music room. The latter two sold to me by a delightful couple, stolidly manning the door, who told us they were from Minehead Folk Club. Lucky chaps.
In the jealously guarded Inner Sanctum we found that Derek Burgess and Kitty Vernon were hosting an evening which was advertised as being us, Hector Gilchrist and Dave Taylor. In fact, it featured a whole lot of other people too, and a very excitable butterfly, which emerged during our set. Our performance time had been also re-adjusted, and this was complicated a little further by an invitation to join in the singing in the round early on, as a sort of appetiser for what we would be doing later. So we ran " It's All Over Now" by them ,and as we always find with Banbury audiences, they joined in with the choruses most enthusiastically.
Dave Taylor I'd bumped into previously, at Atherstone's Larder Café, when I was doing a sneaky solo spot there. I quite like his stuff-he did a funny song about ill fitting trousers, and a rather good Bob Dylan parody. Hector gave us some very soothing and rather wistful ballads, beautifully sung and accompanied by a very interesting guitar. In between there were lots of other songs by other people. One lady who arrived quite late sang an excellent song called " Pity the Poor Landlord " which we all thought was rather jolly. Our guitarist Dave was also very taken by a version of "The Hiring Fair"-but I don't know who that was.
Eventually it was us. We romped through "The Odeon", "Courting", "Down Our Street" ,and "Need Your Love So Bad." Then it was time for "If I were a Goat," which, when it started in our set was a bit of a risk, but now seems to be catching on everywhere we go. Probably because the chorus is so easy to learn. There was some proper good bleating coming from around that room, and most of it was aimed at us, but our slot had passed all too soon, and Derek was suddenly signalling one more. At least, I think that's what he was signalling. Anyway we concluded with "Folking Liberty." The audience managed to negotiate that without anyone causing a public order offence.
We thought maybe as it was advertised in the programme as 8.00-11.00 and we'd finished on eleven at the dot, there might be an encore and then "Good Night Campers" but far from it. As we packed our gear away it became evident that the bar was still open, another sequence of singaround was in hand, and further, a large number of returning folkies were gathered outside looking revved up for a party. That provided us with a dilemma. Should we stay? Or go? We chose the sensible option and drove home. After all, most of these people only had to stagger across the grass and into their tent whereas I got home at 1.30am which is quite early for me nowadays.
