Rob, Dave and I set off at 5.00pm-ish to head for Na-Mara’s first ever gig at the historic Wurzel Bush Folk Club. This historic club has not long ago celebrated its 50th anniversary and is now being run by Craig Sunderland whom we had the pleasure of meeting before the pandemic at the (sadly now defunct) Great Knight Folk Club in Northampton
Being half term, the M1 was reasonably quiet and so we travelled sedately north towards Rugby. Being in plenty of time, we called in at the Watford Gap services for a sarnie and a much-needed loo stop.
Refreshed in various ways, we then pressed on to central Rugby, to the Rugby West Indian Association clubhouse in Railway Terrace, the home of the Wurzel Bush Folk Club.
The RWIA clubhouse consists of a long room with a bar at one end and a function room at the other. To our surprise, we arrived as the club’s pool team were having a pre-match practice for an away game that night. That league must be pretty competitive because those lads certainly looked like they knew what they were doing.
Not long after we’d carried our gear into the club, Craig and his fellow club organiser arrived and, as the pool players finished off and departed for their match to be replaced by folk club members arriving for the gig, they began setting up an impressive PA system for the evening.
Like the Loughton Folk Club a few nights earlier, the Wurzel Bush Folk Club has a lot of talent amongst its membership. We already knew from our meeting at the Great Knight Folk Club that Craig was a truly excellent performer and he started the night off wonderfully well with a couple of great songs and wonderful guitar work. He was followed by a range of other club regulars who were all very fine musicians too. In the two floor spot series before Rob and I went on, the club was treated to some excellent traditional songs and tunes, as well as some really well delivered Woody Guthrie classics.
Apart from a slight technical difficulty with my Lowden guitar (which I will be investigating the moment I've finished posting this blog) the evening went very well. In the time-honoured way that Wurzel Bush rewards its performers, a very capacious chamber pot (I kid you not) was duly passed around audience members at half-time and I’m pleased to report that those in attendance gave very generously to support our music - for which many thanks are owed.
Interestingly, at half time, Rob and I were approached by a young couple who had travelled to the gig from Leamington Spa, along with their delightful dog, Lola. It turned out that Colin was the grandson of the man for whom our song The Silver Duro was written. Rob and Colin had a long chat about the Basque Children's Association of ’37 and we quickly rejigged the evening’s second half set-list to include Only For Three Months, the sister song to The Silver Duro.
With a brief encore of The Maid of Culmore, the evening ended, and some audience members were kind enough to come and buy a few of our CDs. As we had earlier managed to park just outside the venue itself, and we are now three-handed for the loading and unloading of our gear, we found ourselves very quickly back on the M1 and on our way home with Dave at the wheel.
Many thanks to Craig and all at Wurzel Bush Folk Club for both the invitation to perform at the club and for giving us the very warmest of welcomes. It was a lovely evening spent with lovely people.