On another beautiful May evening, we travelled to Reading for our third evening performance in four days. Many years ago, Readifolk were the first folk club to engage us for a headliner spot and, through longstanding club organisers Colin and Una Waters and fellow club stalwarts, has been a consistent source of encouragement and support for us ever since.
Readifolk has now moved to a beautiful new venue, a hall in the grounds of the delightful Watlington House, which is itself a hidden architectural gem in central Reading. Of considerable age, the wood panelled hall where the club takes place has a very modern feel, has excellent acoustics and can accommodate a sizeable number of people.
With the capricious M25 being unusually benign to us, we arrived at the venue early and were able to fit in a little tour of the lovely, tulip-rich, walled garden ahead of Colin and Una arriving to let us in to the hall. We now know a fair number of the club regulars at Readifolk and were quickly able to catch up on all the club’s news as they arrived over the next hour. It was also lovely to see a group of our closest friends who had come along to see us play.
As a club, Readifolk has an abundance of riches when it comes to singers and performers. The club must have some very busy, high quality, singaround nights. Namesakes Danny and Alison McNamara kicked this particular evening off with a couple of excellent songs on mandola and concertina. Jan followed with a well delivered and wry rendition of The Nutting Girl, and Malcolm Smith, with his East Anglian roots, provided two poignant and amusing songs from the region.
We then performed our first 40-minute set and the audience was very engaged and most generous in its chorus singing. Again, our song ‘We Met Upon the Barricades’ seemed to be received very well.
At the break, a number of people went out into the walled garden to take in the cool evening air before returning for a second round of songs from club regulars. Testimony to the resources the club has to hand, this second of songs was delivered by a completely different group of performers from the first half set. Kristin, Robert and Jane provided an excellent array of traditional and contemporary songs and were followed by two rousing traditional songs from Readifolk’s next week’s guests, the fine three-piece RyeWolf.
We then returned to the stage to finish off the evening and couldn’t have been more pleased with the audience reaction to it. We were again delighted to provide an encore at the end of the evening.
Many thanks to Colin and Una for the invitation to return to Readifolk and many thanks to Danny McNamara for his excellent MC-ing and for his very kind introduction before we took to the stage. We wish Readifolk all the very best in their new home and we look forward to returning to this truly lovely club again sometime in the not too distant future.