A Toast to Friends and Family,
Readifolk, the Reading Folk Club, is one of our favourite clubs. The organisers, Una and Colin and their friends on the Committee, have consistently been generous to us, giving us an early showcase and one of our first full, ‘headliner’ gigs. So, it was with great pleasure that we set off on Sunday evening to go and visit the club in the RISC centre in central Reading. The pleasure was doubled for me because my daughter, now living in Reading, was coming along with friends, plus some of our very closest and longstanding friends had also said they were coming along.
The last time Rob and I had been to Readifolk it had been a wintry night in February 2009, with snow threatening, and (not surprisingly) a few regulars staying at home. Tonight was different. The club was pretty full by the time the proceedings began. The evening began with compere Ian and friend doing some amusing self-penned material to liven up the audience. The hilarity was then taken up a notch with the next performer, a young woman, performing Captain Coulston. It being a pirate song, she had brought along a toy parrot with an internal microphone to repeat everything she said. Very amusingly, the switch on the parrot then broke and its mimic function couldn’t be turned off. After a few minutes of great hilarity, the parrot had to be put out of the room – but friends tell me that, for the whole first half, it could be heard replaying bits of na-mara, as we went through our paces. (Does that mean double PRS?) At half time, some electronic evisceration was administered – the parrot, like a slaughtered chicken, was eventually brought back into the room– with its battery in the owner’s other hand. Ouch!
The second half kicked off with some good floorspots, including a fitting and rightful tribute to the recently deceased Bert Jansch.
After good nights at Barton and St Neots, Rob and I were well rehearsed and raring to go. We played a full range from our repertoire in both halves and the audience responded very warmly to it all. In the second half, we again took the chance to further embed The English Penny and The Silver Duro into the repertoire. Readifolk likes a good sing and they really helped make The English Penny a special moment.
Once again, it was nice to be asked to play an encore, which we were happy to oblige with Three Bonny Ships. Compere Ian then closed the night with some very kind words about our performance, for which we thank him. Time allowed me to quickly catch up with friends and family, before setting off home. Rob bought me a little cool bag for my recent enty-enth birthday. So, the slightly chilled bottle of Hook Norton Gold in the car on the home was very welcome after a lovely (but very warm) evening with Readifolk. We are already looking forward to going back to the club and fervently hope it won’t be too long.
We are still working on the video material we have been capturing on recent gigs. Once we have them, we will send out notification.