After letting the usual daily madness of the morning M25 calm down, we loaded up ‘the van’ with our instruments and necessaries on an overcast Friday morning and set off for Bromyard. Despite the weather, excitement was running high as great news had reached us earlier in the week. In addition to performing at two more intimate concert slots on Saturday afternoon and evening and running a workshop on the Sunday morning, we had also been allocated 50 minutes on the Main Stage on the first evening of the festival and would be the penultimate act of the evening, going on just ahead of headliners Show of Hands. The thought of playing to a packed marquee added to the usual thrill of visiting a new festival.
The drive over to Bromyard was fine. We stopped for coffee in picturesque Burford and, eschewing the ‘charms’ of the busiest service station either of us had ever seen, we pressed on close to Bromyard for a pub lunch which turned out cheaper, hotter, quieter and superior to anything we could have hoped for aside the dear old M5.
After lunch, it was a mere hop and a step into Bromyard where we registered with the organisers who furnished us with our wristbands for the weekend and information on our accommodation. Sadly, the warmth of the organisers was not matched by the weather which broke at around this time and began to pelt the festival site with heavy rain.
Having a little time to kill, we had a wander around what was a compact site filled with a good array of craft, instrument and food stalls. We wandered in to have a look at our Main Stage venue for the evening which impressive in size and the kit being mounted in it. We dropped some CDs off with the on-site vendor. We then moved the car to behind the Main Stage and hunkered down and waited for the sound check as the rain continued to fall heavily. As we waited for Show of Hands to arrive, we spent our time between reading and taking sorties out to chat with the very friendly stewards and watch the sound technicians setting up.
As both headliners and technically the most complicated band for the evening, Show of Hands naturally had precedence for the sound check. Theirs is a very impressive, experienced and professional set up, both artistically and technically, and it was most instructive to watch them work through their sound check. It was obvious even from the bits and pieces of the sound check that the audience were in for a treat that night.
We were next on for the sound check which went well. The technical team remembered us from the Warwick Festival the year before and set us up well for the evening. As we came to the end of our sound check, he band on before us, The Goat Ropers Rodeo Band, were just arriving for their sound check.
Given we had now had some time before the show itself we took the chance to drop off our bags at our accommodation for the weekend. Robert was one of the generous souls in the town that had offered to put artists up for the weekend and, as we looked out of the window of his house at the pouring rain, we were doubly grateful for his hospitality!
Before setting off back to the festival site, we very briefly rehearsal a couple of things we wanted to ensure went right later on. Once we were happy, we got back in the van, made our way back to the festival site and again parked up behind the Main Stage, ready for the show.
Prompt at starting time, comedian and fine musician Keith Donnelly got the show underway. Sitting in the green room, we could gauge from the gales of laughter he was getting that there was already a pretty healthy audience in the marquee.
After Keith, it was the turn of the 'Goat Ropers'. These three young lads from North Wales have a great future ahead of them. With their close harmonies, great guitar work and thumping double bass, playing a mix of their own material and a few covers, they really got the audience going. Between chatting in the green room with the very charming Keith Donnelly and sneaking a view of the Goat Ropers from the wings aside the Main Stage, the time passed quickly and we got ourselves ready to go on.
It is always a joy to be allowed to play a decent length set in any setting but particularly so with a big festival slot. It really allows you to get into your stride and so it was at Bromyard. We eased into the performance with a song we know well and we know pleases audiences. From Rob's first mandola run and my first struck chord, we were away. We showcased the full range of what we do to an increasingly packed marquee which, at the end, had over 1,000 in the audience. We included new songs L'Amant de Nantes and Garden of England in the set and it was pleasing to know we had played them both well and that they had triggered such a good reaction from the audience.
But time passes quickly under the lights and our time was up in the blink of an eye. Once finished we quickly removed our gear from the stage to make way for Show of Hands whom we’d spotted in the wings waiting to come on.
We retreated initially to the green room and had our first alcohol of the evening. London Pride from the fridge - and a couple of slices of toast and marmalade, don't knock it 'til you've tried it -, listening to Show of Hands getting going. It doesn't get much better than that. We chatted some more with Keith and briefly with organiser Dick Dixon and felt very content with what we'd achieved. We then slipped round to the wings and took the opportunity to watch the rest of the Show of Hands set. They are a great band and were really on form that night. They had the audience singing lustily to their well known numbers and pleasing them further with newer songs.
Knowing that we would have to get the van off an increasingly soggy festival field late at night, we waited until Show of Hands went into their well deserved encores and took the opportunity to slip away offsite before the crowds began leaving the marquee.
As we motored back to our accommodation, Bromyard town looked as though it had had a good Friday night too. In the five minutes back to our accommodation, we had two people veer dangerously close to the van as we were passing. Indeed, one group of lads staggering along Bromyard high street carrying their cans of beer wouldn't have been too far amiss in a zombie film -but these were very clearly very content zombies.
Not surprisingly, we were ready to drop by the time we got into our accommodation and, as my mother used to say, we didn't need much rocking to get off to sleep.
It was only on the Saturday morning that we finally had chance to meet our host Robert. To our amazement, when we did so, he was preparing a very good cooked breakfast for us. Sheer luxury! We spent a nice hour chatting with Robert over his excellent breakfast before setting off to the festival site to check on CD sales and see who was about and what was going on. The weather had improved and the site was busy. Over a cup of coffee, we had a nice chat with the Goat Ropers who, like us, had had a great night the night before. Given they are as keen to spread south as we are to spread north, we swapped some useful notes about contacts in our respective regions. Rob and I then watched a few of the Morris teams in action and eventually turned back to Robert's for a quick rehearsal before our afternoon and evening concerts.
Both of our Saturday concerts were in the intimate surroundings of The Falcon Mews Theatre. This was a nicely sized concert space created by the owners of The Falcon pub and used for amateur dramatics and other functions by local townspeople.
Since we were kicking off both the afternoon and evening concerts, we were there in good time to set up for what was the first of our two acoustic performances. Afternoon compere Dave James was both welcoming and highly professional and, to allow us to better fine tune what we were going to perform in the afternoon session, kindly asked on our behalf who in the audience had seen us at the concert the night before. Very pleasingly a goodly number had seen us and one kind soul was heard to call out "Yeah, they were brilliant". That is all the encouragement anyone needs to throw themselves into a performance and we did so with gusto and our 40 minute slot flew by. We got great feedback from both the audience and from Dave. Indeed, one elderly lady, whom we had seen get out of her seat and dance at the back of the theatre, independently took both Rob and I aside and said quietly, " Every year there is one standout band and, this year, it is you!". How wonderful for her to say such a thing!
We stayed around to watch the lovely Heather Knights, the talented Infinite Cherries and the legendary Steve Tilston sets, taking it in turns to pop out briefly to get a sandwich and a cuppa.
Given that we were staying very close to The Falcon, we were back resting in the comfort of Robert's house within minutes of the concert finishing.
The evening concert had extra excitement for me as I knew that some close friends linked to my university days were going to come along to the show - and I hadn't seen some of them for over twenty five years!
As with the afternoon concert, we were kicking off the concert and arrived at The Falcon Mews in plenty of time to get tuned up and meet the MC for the evening. About fifteen minutes before the show, my friends turned up and there was much hugging all round. This had just turned a great weekend into a truly magical one.
I was keen to speak with the other acts for the evening, Issy and Dave Emeney with Kate Riaz, and The Teacups to explain that, despite us wanting to see them perform, I was extremely keen to catch up with my friends and (very unlike na-mara) I was likely to disappear after our performance. All being nice people, they naturally understood the situation and were very gracious in accepting my apologies
With the added frisson of playing to old friends, the evening performance went really well. It was a great honour to see one of our friends from Cambridge Folk Club return to see us for a third time in the festival. Again, L'Amant de Nantes and Garden of England went really well, and we got a lovely warm feeling from the audience some of whom had told us they had been keen to see us in a more intimate setting than the main Stage..
It was lovely for me then to catch up with old friends and Rob was able to join us all later, after watching more of the evening show. It is the mark of good friends that one feels it as easy as a warm bath, slipping back into conversation and catching up with their news, and so it was that night - and we talked until closing time and made plans to make sure it wasn't another twenty five years before we met up again!
The next morning, Robert again provided us with another wonderful cooked breakfast and we felt doubly privileged to have been looked after so well. The morning timetable was quite tight for us. So, once we had helped Robert clear away, we had to get down to the festival site and pick up any unsold CDs and then get back to the upstairs room in The Falcon Mews for Rob's workshop.
The day started well - we had sold a good number of CDs at the festival site. It got better when we found out how many people wanted to join the workshop. We had an absolutely full house for Rob's instruction on Asturian, Galician and French tunes. Indeed, we had some people turn up just to hear more of our tunes -which was a huge boost for morale.
As he always does, Rob did a great job engaging people in the music and getting them playing along. We had some talented musicians in the workshop and this meant we got through a lot of tunes, with harmonies aplenty being played. The atmosphere and banter in the group was great. We were able to give some leads to help those attending find bands like Tejedor and Niundes. It was also pleasing to see the keenness of those attending to talk further with us after the workshop, and to see a further number of CDs being bought. Along with those attending the workshop, we left the room with a great big smile on our faces.
It was now early afternoon and we needed to turn for home. We had taken our leave from Robert earlier in the day and, as such, it was just a case of loading up the van and setting off. We drove for around ninety minutes, had a coffee break and, with the roads behaving themselves, made it home in time for a full evening catching up with family at home.
All in all, Bromyard Folk Festival proved a great experience for us. It allowed us to make a lot of new friends, especially from south Wales and the West Midlands - two regions we are extremely keen to play more music in. Our music had been appreciated and we had seen and enjoyed the music of many others. Many thanks to Dick Dixon and his festival committee for their invitation to play at the festival. We very much hope that we can work with the same team again soon. Similarly, many thanks to Robert who was a tremendous host, made us feel at home and who looked after us wonderfully well all weekend.