Saturday 22 August 2009

in the minibus with the dance band on the way to Edinburgh, passing round Henderson's oatcakes
We're well on the way to tonight's gig, our dance band is cooking and we might even have rehearsed enough, all within the time available. It makes things rather easier to be in the company of quite such talented and experienced musicians: I was expecting this one to be very hard work to put together, but everyone seems to understand exactly what is required.

I even gave myself the early part of the morning off to go to the farmers market today.

Thursday night's show overran by 25 minutes (it was billed as a 60 minute show) but I'd explained to the audience that this was going to happen and that it would have been such a waste not to let everyone do their thing. So I finally got home at 1am. The problem with having four different gigs in a row, and being nominally responsible for them, is that you don't really have time to digest the experience of each one, except in as much as it's useful learning for the process of doing the next.

behind a forest of mic stands,
L-R: Alison McGillivray, Alasdair Roberts, Chris Norman, Barnaby Brown, DMcG, Martin Carthy, Patsy Seddon, Bill Taylor 

So rather than considering all the interesting musical things that happened (and there were many different tunes left in my head) I'm left thinking about the shortcomings of the acoustic, or how on earth we get the minibus anywhere near the venue.

Time for my last doze of the day - at least this morning I managed not to wake up till about 7am.