A glorious day, a great folk festival, the seaside, meeting old friends and making new ones – that is what we had yesterday on our trip to the south coast to play our part in the magnificent Broadstairs Folk Week.
We set off early to be at the Music Zone in The Charles Dickens School campus in good time to prepare for our afternoon workshop on tunes from the Celtic regions of Spain and France at 2.30pm and arrived with enough time to have a sarnie and set the room up.
The 90-minute workshop was very well attended by concertina, accordion, flute, fiddle, mandolin and guitar players and set in the school gym, it might have been appropriate to warm up with a few press-ups. Fortunately, Rob began with a rhythmic name game instead. It was a full-on session that whizzed by and the experience of the musicians in the group shone through as we were able to work up tunes and a French song very quickly. Everyone seemed to enjoy it and we had some nice chats with participants and excellent feedback after the event.
Two of our good friends, Chrissie and John, from the St Albans folk community were spending the week at the folk festival and kindly came along to sit in on the workshop. So, it was great to then be able to wander out and have a cuppa with them and wind down after the workshop.
After packing our kit away in the very efficiently run secure facility at the school, we then wandered into the town to clear our heads and get some scran before our evening concert at 8.00pm. We eventually plumped for fusion cooking – well, OK, chilli and chips.
After a quick walk along the promenade to settle our stomachs, we then made our way back to the Theatre at The Charles Dickens School to be ready for our sound check.
It was a real pleasure to meet up with members of Commonground and listen to them do their sound check. Then, after the main act for the evening, Steve Turner, had sound checked we worked with the wonderful PK, Gaz and Katie on our own check which was organised wonderfully well. The MC for the evening was Sylvia Needham and, in the intervening time between the end of the sound check and the start of the concert, we had chance to chat with her about her recent playing schedule and many other things besides. Being a true professional, Sylvia had certainly done her homework on us and was able to introduce us wonderfully well to start the evening concert.
I’m pleased to say we delivered a good set showcasing a variety of the things we do. We were then followed by Commonground who hail from Stroud and Reading and who gave a delightful and varied performance full of carefully considered musicality and containing more than a few surprises including a wonderful song from Cirque du Soleil. Look out for them if they are playing near you.
Sadly, given some early morning commitments for us the following day, we had to turn for home at the interval. This meant we couldn’t stay on to listen to Steve Turner. So, many apologies to him. I am sure he did a great show.
Many thanks to Kim Headley for the invitation to perform again at the wonderful Broadstairs Folk Week. Thanks also to all those who attended the workshop and made it such a lovely event. Finally, many thanks to PK, Gaz and Katie for a great sound on the evening concert and to Sylvia Needham for doing such a good job MC-ing the event. We very much hope to return to Broadstairs at some time in the future. It is a truly great event in a truly lovely town.