Performers came from far and near to play folk music of every description and make a great night of music at Royston Folk Club last night.
For its showcase evening, the Royston Folk Club uses a delightful old room, complete with wooden beams and an excellent bar area off to one side. It also has a large room elsewhere in the complex of buildings that make up The Old Bull Inn in Royston in north Hertfordshire for its concert evenings.
Having arrived early for our sound check, it was very nice to meet club organisers Mark Gamon and Chris Walls and to chat with fellow performers. It was doubly nice to then watch as extra chairs were brought into what was already a sizeable room, to accommodate a large and growing audience. It was lovely to see that some of our friends from other folk clubs had come across to Royston to watch us play.
On what was a hot and humid evening, local hosts Mark Gamon and Nick Blishen kicked the evening off in style with an original song followed by a Richard Shindell song, being joined in the latter by fine local fiddler, Matt Kelly.
We followed on with songs Three Bonny Ships and Garden of England which I’m pleased to report were both well received. In turn, we were then followed by Liz Cotton from Cambridge who played two of her hilarious and cleverly constructed songs commenting on modern day sexual mores.
Then, quite appropriately given the sultriness of the evening, we watched the excellent local guitar-fiddle duo of Matt Kelly and Gary Woolley perform some Cajun and American folk classics.
Finally, to take everyone up to the break, singer-songwriter Ian Roland, who had travelled up from Brighton, performed a couple of his own songs, deftly picking his 12-string guitar.
After a break for buying raffle tickets, CDs and the all important cold beers, the format was repeated, with each act again doing a couple of numbers. For the second set, we played a couple of munieras and Navajos & Pirates.
Clearly, this rapid switching of acts puts a lot of pressure on the sound man, but Chris Walls was more than up to the job, producing a great sound for each act in turn as they mounted the stage to perform.
The evening was finally brought to a close by the excellent Red Dirt Band who had travelled in from various far-flung points in Devon and Dorset. Consisting of singer/songwriter, Russell Middleton, double bassist, Ian Turner, and violinist, Chloe Box, Red Dirt provided an excellent set comprising self –penned and traditional songs. With great stage presence and musicality, they brought the evening to a close in style and deserved the calls for an encore. Listen out for them!
As we turned for home, we could see that the weather had finally broken. There had been no thunder and lightning, but soft rain was now falling and the air was mercifully cooler. However, the warmth of the evening was still very much with us. We had made some new friends, both at the club and amongst the performers, and we would very much like to congratulate club organisers Mark and Chris and their team at Royston Folk Club on what they have managed to build up in such a short space of time, and we very much hope to visit the club again in the not too distant future.