As our autumn round of gigs really takes off, we made our way to meet up again with Archie Macauley and the Uxbridge Folk Club again – this time not at the concert venue where we supported Emily Smith, but the home case for the club, the Uxbridge RNA Club.
The venue was intimate, the welcome was warm and the company on stage was excellent. There was robust shanty singing to get everyone warmed up. This was followed by brief but excellent performances by both the Blue Rose Code and The Raven – both of which were very impressive and stimulating to listen to, and seem likely to return to Uxbridge as headliners in due course. There was also a couple of very good songs by a friend of Blue Rose Code – whose name I didn’t catch.
We decided to take the lead of those doing the floorspots and played acoustically – and that really developed an intimate and listening atmosphere. We played a full range from our repertoire bringing ‘When I was a Fair Maid’ out of retirement and, for its first time outside the rehearsal room, we played our new song The Silver Duro – which is a story about the eventual reuniting of Basque children with their parents following their evacuation from Bilbao in 1937. I am pleased to say that the song was extremely well received and it will now become a very regular part of our repertoire.
Our attention now turns to a busy few days ahead – playing twice in one day on Sunday, and then out Monday and Tuesday nights at the Unity Folk Club and then the Romford Folk Club.