Friday 7 June 2019

NFC Night 5th June 2019

      I seem to start all of the posts about NFC monthly sessions by making excuses and saying that the dice were loaded against us,the odds were stacked,etc etc etc. And then going on to enthuse about what a good night we had. (Well those that attended,anyway. Can't speak for the stay-aways). But once again,that's exactly how it was. 
       Illness reared up and clouted several of us  over the head beforehand,added to which there were some genuine logistical changes we had to make. All in all we started late and ran over a little bit, but I feel I speak for most when I say we had once heck of a time. 
     Mags had been sidelined with a back injury and was unable to help me set up the room beforehand and run the raffle during the interval and afterwards. No Flossy,the shining star of Nunc who makes all the blokes in the room go all soppy whenever she sings. NO JBS to provide us with the usual array of excellent photographs. But although we missed you all terribly (and your absence was noted),we made a damn good fist of things anyway. Come back soon-and Ian Bourne, too who would have been there if he could. Ian, we send good wishes for a swift recovery. 
        Volunteers rallied round and joined forces to fill in the gaps. Gill Gilsenan,Barbara Wyatt and Anne Beeson helped with the raffle. Andy Jones and Ray Buckler (as you can see,here and elsewhere) provided a fine photographic record. Having all three North Warwickshire Folk Clubs there and playing added a real family flavour to the evening. As did the innovative nature of some of the acts. And,it being John Kearney's 57th birthday,some revellers had responded positively to a call to bring in cans of baked beans as surprise gifts for the Human Jukebox. We made a gift of them to Nuneaton Foodbank afterwards. 
          So we started by singing "Happy Birthday" to JK and to Harvey James one of our young Sound technicians,whose birthday it was on the day before. Then a Flossy-free Nunc opened with three numbers, including a rousing version of "Copperhead Road."  I was there only thanks to antibiotics and a key to the private loo' given that a UTI had poleaxed me for 24 hours. The photos suggest that were standing poles apart but actually I was so zonked out I hadn't given any thought to where I was standing.
          Atherstone Folk Club's Resident House Band Finger in The Jar followed. They chose a trio of songs reflecting the D Day 75th Anniversary the following day,including the autobiographical tale of a serviceman of the time, and culminating in a version of "Oo'er The Hills and Far Away." This came complete with an additional verse cleverly fitted in to reflect the situation. It got everyone singing as besides its poignancy,it's a great chorus song.
       Next up we had a totally new and unique experience for NFC audience members, indeed (unless someone knows different), for any English Folk Club audience. Cor Cymraeg were a quintet who sang each song only in Welsh. Andy Jones, well known to NFC audiences,introduced the songs. Sospan Fach of course being a song beloved of Welsh Rugby fans was familiar to many of the audience. Having said that,in the days when Bedworth,Coventry and Nuneaton were dotted with collieries there would have been hundreds of welsh speaking miners living locally. Diolch yn Fawr,Cor Cymraeg.
        Anyone walking in at this point might have been excused for wondering if they had been transported from Nuneaton to Llangollen and had blundered by mistake into the 2019 Eisteddfford. Another nice touch was to invite their Hungarian choir member forward to give us a solo traditional folk song from her home country. Hungarian songs,in an English Folk Club, performed by a Welsh choir. Wow!
           Malc and Gill followed. NFC regulars,they are Bedworth Folk Club's Residents and they too added a D Day slant to the occasion,including a version of "Where Have All The Flowers Gone." Our audience sang along with it very movingly. BFC have now moved permanently to what was previously their temporary accommodation at Trent Valley Working Mens Club. Like our venue,it has a raised stage a bar in the room and as an added bonus the car parking is free and extensive. Next Wednesday's Guests are Will Finn and Rosie Calvert. It's a friendly club,a ten minute step up the road from where we are based,and free admission with a raffle,like ours. Give it your support.
            We had been trying for ages to fit in Tyburn to do us a turn.Hedley Stone,Dave Cook and Jan Richardson. I'd seen them at a few local clubs previously. Jan is no stranger to NFC but to get the trio playing at NFC was a challenge. Dave bless him, is not at all well and could not make the steep steps onto our stage. So the lads miked him up from the floor,and fed his guitar through the P.A. You can see though the photo below that,although not ideal, this worked o.k. We were able to see and hear Dave's fine guitar playing. As someone wrote elsewhere, "Tyburn did, hands down, the best version of "Killing The Blues" I've ever heard, Jan's voice gets better and better, and the interplay between the guitars and fiddle was spellbinding."  Their arrangements certainly showed great thought.
           So having supped already at the table of excellence,what better way to follow Tyburn than our first Guests of a double bill, the unaccompanied vocal harmony trio Thrup'nny Bits.The Bits treated us to a selection of material from their extensive repertoire of published recordings.This Including their latest,featuring songs about the Peterloo Massacre.Initially they tried to carry off Des's remarkable track record of impersonating Billy Gibbons with his trademark shades. 
           Amidst their catalogue of traditional (and venerable) material they also added the cleverly rude "Bold Sir John," and finished with "Breaking Wind Suddenly," A song which includes the classic line "I blamed the dog...but they knew it was me." 
             Time for the interval and the all important Raffle then,as Gill and Barbara weaved among the throng tempting gamblers by inviting them to win a most impressive array of priizes, generously brought along by performers and audience members. As Gill and Ann Beeson were still feverishly folding tickets,Nunc got the second half under way with audience friendly versions of "Knocking On Heavens Door" and "Irish Rover." Both featuring audience-only verses. 
             The draw produced some interesting results. Tyburn had a clean sweep,picking up several prizes.The bottle of Port did not last long:the Malteesers and Dairy Box went early,as did the Prosecco and other bottles of Fizz. Soon all that was left was the classic Nunc style Shirt Of Many Colours donated by John Kearney who has a wardrobe full of them (Me too!) A gasp rippled round the hall as the last winning ticket was revealed as belonging to....(drum roll) John Kearney. 
             Well the audience by now were shattered. Exhausted but pumped up. What better moment to bring on the excellent Rob Halligan to close the evening? Dressed to look the part and with an impressively compact box of tricks at his feet within dabbing distance,he sounded it,too. It's a long time since I've seen a guitar made to work that hard, He must have fingers of steel.
              Rob supports many local good causes and charities. He does an awful lot to support local music. He is an honest and decent man who writes powerful songs of great strength. With a few covers sprinkled in, his set was an energetic,pulsating wall of sound. He engages the audience and works them like another instrument. Those few who had not seen him before were most impressed. No wonder,as he rose to several encores,he had lost that jacket and was down to his shirtsleeves. A cracking way to finish another excellent nightup int The Queen's Hall. 
            So despite the challenges, we surmounted all the logistical problems and continued our record of putting on innovative and eclectic music which crosses many boundaries and covers many genres. Can we raise the bar any further? Well yes we can. July sees us premiering Celtic Folk Rock,with the debut at NFC of Joe O'Donnell's Shykayla. This is a prestigious coup for us. It is something we have never tried before,and we'll need all and every one of our 340 Facebook Friends to come along and support such an adventurous project that night. See you there? 

Tuesday 4 June 2019

May 2019 Review

   To my shame,this is the first account of anything musical since reflecting on Iota's brilliant May Day performance at Nuneaton Folk Club. In fairness,I was abroad for 10 days in May and struggling with health issues in between gigs for the rest of it. I have no photos for most of these gigs as either people didn't take them or none were posted up on Social Media. 

Out at The White Horse
      On Saturday 4th, Nunc were the Guest Act  at the White Horse Mini Folk Festival in Seagrave, Leicestershire. A new venue for us, this was at the kind invitation of Dave and Julia Taylor. It's a nice old pub,in a pretty spot,and the weather was unseasonably warm-or so it seemed. Actually we thought we were to close the evening,but as things turned out, we did our Guest spot-and then the singing in the Round continued up to closing time. 
     We were very well received and made very welcome.  It was a very game effort from the audience gathered upstairs in the loft opposite the main pub.They sang along with all our choruses. The other floor singers covered a most eclectic mix,covering everything from steel guitar blues to poetry.   We managed to raise a lot of money for Rainbows, a very good cause,being a Children's charity dealing with early bereavement. A subject close to my heart.

Earlsdon Festival
     Two days later we were out in the open air,making a return visit to Earlsdon Festival. The streets were rammed and we had a good turn out to see the full six piece giving it some welly. Quite a few people turned up to support us,which was nice. Including The Reutts,with Linda aka Linda Dickson whom many of you will recall fondly from the local Folk Scene before the onset of her illness. The oddest moment to be honest,was being asked by security to remove my hat upon re-entering The City Arms. Never been asked to do that in a Wetherspoon's before. Sort it out,Tim! Top marks to Colin Halliwell, Caroline White and Alchemista for a first class job on the sound mixing.  

Atherstone Tour Package  
On Wednesday the 29th,May we joined in with Bedworth and Atherstone Folk Clubs as part of a Pizza and Folk Night organised by Phil Benson. Other acts on the bill were Finger in The Jar,Pete McPartland, Malc and Gill,David Parr,John & Elaine Meechan and Brian Phillips.  We were asked to close the evening,and as we were among friends who knew all the songs,the choruses were returned robustly! Both Flossy and I were struggling with throat problems so there was much hacking and hawking off mike in between verses!

MotoFest Coventry 2019
    On Saturday 1st June we were hugely excited to play Broadgate,in the packed centre of Coventry. Surrounded by muscle cars,under the Elephant,opposite the balconies of Las Iguanas,Cosy Club and all the other restaurants in what used to be Cathedral Lanes, other than an earlier Godiva Festival,this was for me the largest crowd I'd  yet played to  in my home town, We had a great response and got those Balconies singing to "Knocking On Heaven's Door." 

Another FM Album Review


Are We Having Fun?                 Dan Donnelly

        The title of Dan Donnelly's latest album is rhetorical. Best summed up by the front cover where the question is captioned in ironically cheerful writing beneath a tourist couple happily snapping away at an emerging mushroom cloud.
            “Are we having fun?” is a line from the opening track: “Time of Our Lives.” (No...not that one. That's Green Day). It kind of reflects much of the material within. “I don't Care” is a tongue-in-cheek protest song about protest. Like most of us,there isn't much that Dan isn't sick of. He lists them all here. Politicians and journalists. Elections, Brexit, Austerity and Recession. The Unemployment,Disaffected Youth and food additives. All get cheerfully eviscerated:
         “Blah Blah Blah! Flood warning! Something something, Nuclear War: Rhubarb rhubarb National Debt:Blah blah blah Terrorist Threat,” he rages. Three minutes of noisy,anarchistic grumbling,passionately played and so waspishly delivered that he evidently really does care. ( Me? I rather cared for it. See what I did there?).
        Dan has an impressive pedigree. He honed his art in Ireland and New York before settling in Exeter and then moving to Teeside. As well as solo success he has guested with The Levellers, The Wonder Stuff, Seth Lakeman and The Oysterband.
Recorded at Green Dragon Studios in Stockton by Adam Gilbert and mixed at 811 Studios by King Glover, this album has overall a very strong Country/Greengrass feel to many of the songs. There is impressive instrumentation on most of the tracks, featuring drums,fiddle,banjo,bass, accordion and “everything else.” ( Dan's not kidding either:there's even a mellotron somewhere in there too!)
       Most songs are original compositions except a cover of Suzanne Vega's “Gypsy.” Stripped of a lot of the production bells and whistles,this reveals a sensitive vocal,well articulated. By contrast,his other cover version is of Johnny Mercer's “I'm an Old Cowhand.” Once recorded by Bing Crosby, there is much Yippie Yi Yo-Kayah about it. Barrelhouse piano and a blousy trombone solo add to the good time feel..
Docklands.” is another jolly hootenanny celebration,listing the broad canvas of erm...“characters” one might meet on the quaysides or wharves of any disreputable Seaport Town. Canada Water and Mudchute it ain't: there's not a briefcase in sight.
       When Dan does get serious, the results are endearing. “Son On The Horizon” is a charming homage to impending fatherhood. “Things are going to change for you and me,he predicts. “What If?” features a duet between Dan and Cecillia Donnelly. A daughter I'm guessing who emerged from that same horizon? It's actually rather nice. ”Keep” is a modest tempo song greatly enhanced by some sensitive accordion playing from Gayna Grimshaw.
         “Do It Till You Die”, a noisy encouragement to excess in all things which restores the rowdy and defiant hellraising. “Music is Free” has an intro redolent of “Money” by The Flying Lizards. It's a comedic swipe at the perils of attempting to make a living out of musicianship. Radio Ga Ga meets Dr.Hook. Everybody's getting paid but me,” he complains.
Dan's music is innovative,angry in places and sprinkled with one or two snippets of industrial language that the aspiring Folk Radio Jock might chose to bleep out. Sometimes bitter,often sarcastic and always thought-provoking, his songs are quite short,which is a godsend for radio presenters. His admirable approach seems to be “if I can't get it said in under 4 minutes it ain't worth saying.”
       The one exception to this is “Happy Ever After.” (which is far from happy).It opens with an ominous melange of distorted radio messages indicating clearly that something untoward is happening. It is Dan's attempt at storytelling. Not a particularly comfortable story as it is the reminiscence of a guy who has shot his partner dead.
         Dan's songs are always interesting and deserve reflection beyond a first hearing. The album comes as a gatefold CD. I looked in vain for a song sheet. Not because I did not understand the songs,but because on subsequent listening I would have liked to have read further and analysed them a bit more deeply.