The last evening of May saw Rob and I making our first visit to the Loughton Folk Club.
The club is held in a nice sized room on the second floor of the Loughton Club in the centre of town. So, kind to us was the M25 that we arrived before anyone else. So, we took advantage of the quiet, tuned up and had ourselves a 10 minute rehearsal to get ourselves settled in.
Organisers Jim and John arrived to hear us having a bash through one of our numbers and we had chance to introduce ourselves while the room was in the process of being transformed from bar room to folk club.
The floorsingers were very good and we were very fortunate to have talented palyer of all things squeezable, Owen Woods as our support. We had previously worked with him in January at the Maltings in St Albans. Owen again played some wonderful music and had the audience entranced. He even showed his prowess at tapping the rhythm with his feet, French Canadian style, (I forget the technical term that Owen used) as he played through some excellent Quebecois tunes. I really hope Owen gets the exposure he so richly deserves. He tells us that he has been gigging with the very talented Marianne Neary - so that would be a pairing to watch out for!
Club locals, five ukeleles strong, singing Hi-ho-Silver lining was great fun at half time and the Loughton audience clearly loves to sing and sings very well. Indeed, it has its own chorus song book, which means that everyone can truly join in – what a great idea!
Our two sets went well and we received some very kind words from the organisers and audience. Many thanks to Jim for inviting us to play and for arranging a date switch for us, to enable us to honour a commitment that had arisen in late April.
We very much hope to be invited back to Loughton in the future and could well be going back for a special evening of protest song in November.