St Neots Folk Club have been a huge support to Na-Mara right from our earliest days and it was an honour to be invited to again perform a concert, this time on the last night of the 2024 St Neots Folk Festival as support to main act , Oxford-based band, Moonrakers.
One might expect a one-hour trip up the A1M on a Sunday afternoon to be trouble-free but those gremlins at the Ministry of Transport are clearly monitoring Na-Mara’s Facebook page and when they see us with a gig, they will act quickly to make life difficult, and this was no exception. With the A1M closed, we were forced to travel north, cross-country up through Kimpton and Hitchin to get on a trouble-free stretch of the motorway. After that it was plain sailing.
Despite the disruption, we still managed to arrive at the appointed time for a sound check. As we were to discover throughout the evening, Moonrakers are the most generous bunch, and they had agreed to let us use their p.a. system. We said hello to Jacqui, Becci, Sarah and Jon of Moonrakers and the members of the St Neots Folk Club committee who were already busy setting up the room for the evening concert. Sadly, long time club organiser, Roger, was unable to be with us all on the evening.
Eating cake provided in great profusion by the festival organisers, Rob, Dave B and I sat and listened to Moonrakers go through their sound check. It was clearly going to be a good night. Then, we did our sound check with Jon and Sarah helping us enormously to get a good balance of sound.
A minor confusion on the ticketing over the start time for the evening meant that the evening’s performances had to be delayed slightly. However, St Neots Folk Club is very well endowed with its own club performers, and they were able to keep entertained the audience that had arrived by this point.
We were then on for our 45-minute set which all went very well. The audience was a decent size and, as has been our experience with performing at Folk Club nights in St Neots, they are all great chorus singers.
Then it was a reasonably quick turnaround, and Moonrakers took to the stage. Fine playing and excellent vocal harmonies on a mix of self-compositions and traditional folk classics had us and the audience greatly entertained. With Jon on a variety of instruments, Becci on Celtic harp and piano, Jacqui on ‘lead’ cello and accordion, and Sarah with beautiful vocals and percussion responsibilities, the complete sound was a delight to listen to – especially with more cake and, now off duty and not driving home, a pint of beer. Cake and ale indeed.
Sadly, such evenings always have to come to a close and, courtesy of club organiser Di, armed with yet further supplies of cake for tomorrow’s afternoon cup of tea, we said our goodbyes to club organisers and Moonrakers and turned for home. The gremlins at the Ministry of Transport must have gone to bed by then as the drive home was, for once, trouble free.
Many thanks to the committee of the St Neots Folk Club for the invitation to perform again at the St Neots Folk Festival and thanks to Moonrakers for their generosity and friendship throughout the evening. We wish both the St Neots Folk Club and Moonrakers every best wish for the future.