2011 is really beginning to get underway for na-mara now. It was a great honour to be invited to give a full performance at the Tudor Folk Club in Chesham. We have had the pleasure a number of times to visit the club over the past couple of years, to do floor spots and some small showcase performances. We have always seemed to go down well and have benefitted from the warmest of welcomes there. One or two members have even done us the further honour of taking our music and playing it themselves – surely the greatest accolade for folk musicians. So, it was with great pleasure that we accepted the invitation for a full performance where we could cover a decent range of our growing repertoire.
As for all of our performances, we rehearsed hard in the days before the event – in order to be prepared for all eventualities. However, what one doesn’t expect is to be surprised on the stairs up to the club by meeting one’s closest friends from one’s home town who you haven’t seen for nearly 10 years. My great friends Peter and Anne, from Middlesbrough had been over in the UK from their new residence in France for a relative’s wedding and had been staying nearby with Peter’s brother and sister and law, Andrew and Maureen, over the weekend. They had checked out the na-mara website once they knew they were going to be in the local area, found this gig and, instead of coming to say hello decided it would be good fun to surprise me at Chesham! As Rob and I struggled through the fire doors with our customary battery of stringed instruments, I caught a glance of someone (Peter’s brother) who seemed very familiar, and then, on turning to go up the stairs, the surprise was sprung! Much jumping about and hugging followed! Thankfully, there was enough time to get my composure back before the time to start the set.
It was lovely to see the venue full with standing room only. Friends old and new were there to support us. One of the members of the excellent band Zoox also came along to listen and say hello. There were both excellent and amusing floorspots throughout the evening. We did pretty much the whole of The Bite plus some new and older material, and were given a wonderful reception. I’m glad to say that, as was the case in Cambridge, CD sales on the night went very well indeed – which is a nice measure of how things are going on the night. The club organisers’ very kindly called for us to do an encore before people went out into the cold night.
Thankfully, there was time to say a proper goodbye to Peter and Anne and family who were travelling home early the next morning. It was truly wonderful to see them again and they can pay that sort of surprise on me any time they like! I have been keen to get Peter, a former head of modern languages with French as his speciality, involved in the na-mara project. His is a prodigious talent for the French language. When he and Anne were buying a house in France, Peter stepped out of the estate agent’s office momentarily one time. Whilst he was a way, the estate agent said to Anne, “Madame, your husband’s English is very good.” To which a puzzled Anne replied “But, he is English!” to which the estate agent replied “In which case Madame, his French is magnificent!” Clearly, a man with such talent must be recruited to the cause! He and Anne can expect a visit in the not too distant future from me – with a stack of song translations and a burning desire to visit every CD outlet in the nearby towns.
Thank you to Tudor Folk Club for this honour and pleasure and we very much hope that you will invite us back in the not too distant future. We hope you enjoyed the evening as much as we did!