Sunday 29 July 2007

Annapolis Royal,NS

– at the home of Geoff and Judi Butler I’m sitting up in bed listening to the birds out on the shore, after the thunderstorms in the night. Last night was the first gig of our ‘trio with no particular name’ tour: we’ve been The Jolly Boys, Joli Bois, and HTF, and yesterday for no apparent reason we were ‘The Garden of Nuts’ after an unfortunate piece of word-setting in Mackenzie’s oratorio ‘The Rose of Sharon’ which I heard last week and made me laugh so much I couldn’t breathe.

After more civilised sitting out on the deck this morning accompanied by a 4 year old fairy princess, and a stocking-up trip to Julian’s excellent bakery round the corner, DG came and got me from Halifax and we set off for Lunenburg to get Chris and take in the ‘morning after the end of Boxwood’ atmosphere, also encountering Andy Thurston and Suzie LeB.  Then it was time to pack the harpsichord and everything else and get on the road.

 the Jolly Boys on the 'tour bus' 

Somehow we managed to put a set list together in our universally weary state and we played a hot and sticky gig with only an acceptable number of train wrecks, to a very enthusiastic audience. Our encore was cut brutally short when DG’s A string broke. ‘I’ve never broken an A string before!’ Audient: ‘How’s your G string though?’ ‘It’s doing just fine, thanks.’  

I’ve not written much in this diary for a while as I’ve been just too busy. But the Lion CD has been released for sale here on our website and has gathered a very enthusiastic review (‘the recording of the year’, no less) in The Herald, and on Friday a nice feature in the Scotsman, which I read at the airport. I’ll get around to posting both of these eventually.