With a keen eye on weather conditions, we were pretty sure (it being close to midsummer’s day and all that! that we could'nt be prevented from reaching the wonderful Song Loft at Stony Stratford this time by a heavy downfall of snow - but with a summer like this one, anything could happen! Six months earlier, the snow had indeed closed in and both club organisers and ourselves agreed at that time it would not be a good idea for either us and club members to be out on snowy, icy, roads on a night like that. So, with confidence we set off in good heart; nothing could go wrong this time!
We both like playing at The Song Loft very much and this was our first full evening at the club. We had done a floor spot and a support slot for the Tannahill Weavers at the club previously and the club organisers had shown a great interest in our music from those early appearances and kindly invited us back to present more of our material.
With no snow and a wave goodbye to an already choking M1, we set off cross-country, up the relatively fast A5. Indeed,we were just congratulating ourselves on making excellent time to the club when we hit a long and completely static traffic jam just before the roundabout on the edge of Stony Stratford – and there we sat.... and sat. The time we’d set aside for a quiet little rehearsal ticked away, Google Maps was on overdrive (how far away are we...?) and club telephone numbers were found in preparation for delivering bad news. Thankfully, just as things began to look desperate, the traffic eased and we edged past the accident site and made it to The Cock Hotel club venue with just enough time to set up and tune up before club members arrived.
The Song Loft is a friendly club with the best of banter and it was nice to catch up again with the club organisers Colin Turner and Jane Armour who were as welcoming and considerate as ever.
There is a lot of talent at The Song Loft and fellow club organiser Maurice Clark started the musical part of the evening with a couple of very nice songs. We then performed our first set which seemed to go down very well.
The second half floorspots were also kicked off by another of the club’s organisers, Bill Reed, performing a couple of his own excellent compositions. Jeff Wesley and Andrew then between them performed very nice traditional songs from both the UK and the US. Finally, Sally Barnes, winner of the 2012 Watford Folk Club Song Competition played a couple of numbers including her lovely winning entry, ‘Way to Go’. We then finished off the night with our second set.
The Song Loft is a club that loves to sing and it iwas a real pleasure throughout the evening to hear your own words being picked up and sung back to you. We were able to give our new song ‘Garden of England’ its second ever outing and l’Amant de Nantes is really settling into the set now. We also started our performance with Three Bonny Ships in its revamped DADGAD form, which is really coming along. Both at half time and at the end of the performance, we were given some lovely feedback from club members attending.
I can report that the journey home went as ‘smoothly’ as the journey to Stony Stratford. I'm sure if Rob and I were ancient Greeks, we’d be in no doubt by now that we’d somehow grossly offended Frustratus, the god of roadworks. Of late we’ve been down more diversions than a government minister on Newsnight trying to throw Jeremy Paxman off the scent. This evening was no exception with the A5 closed off on our way home. This forced us to go round by Leighton Buzzard which was trauma in itself - bringing back memories of a day 15 years earlier when we took my four year old Thomas the Tank Engine fanatic son for a trip on the town’s renowned narrow gauge steam railway. Exceptionally I’m sure, the weather was appalling that day and the train was much delayed and in need of repair - a drenched and grouchy family outing of epic proportions then unfolded. The town has ever since been known in the McNamara household as ‘Late and Buggered’ and I have never been back - until now. Anyway, we eventually made it home and I was able to grab a beer and some chilli pickle on toast before bed – don’t knock it if you haven’t tried it.....
Many thanks to Colin, Jane, Maurice and all the club organisers at The Song Loft for their invitation for us to play for them. We wish them all a restful summer and every success with the club when it kicks off again in September.