It was wonderful to receive such great support from family, friends and local folk enthusiasts at the launch of our new CD, Navajos & Pirates, at a Folk May Day concert at The Maltings Arts Theatre in St Albans last night. 

In a packed evening of music, the evening was kicked off by the irrepressible Sue Farthing, very ably accompanied by Clive Carey.  Sue certainly got the evening off to a swing with a collection of May-time songs, accompanied with flower garlands.

We then performed the first of two thirty-minute sets, mixing songs and tunes from our new album, Navajos & Pirates, with Only For Three Months - our song about the evacuation of Basque children from Bilbao in May 1937 – and our new ‘murder ballad’, The Black Widows.  Sue’s songs and energy had put the audience in fine voice, and it was great to hear then taking up the choruses in our own set.

After a break for beer and raffle tickets, the audience was treated to an excellent set by Bob Wakeling (on guitar and banjo) and Ellie Hill (on violin).  Amongst other things, we had songs from the pen of Leon Rosselson, we had some excellent traditional songs (including personal favourite ‘Sovay’) and a song from the Australian tradition, The Shearer’s Dream, which I hadn’t heard before.

We then returned to the stage to do a final thirty-minute set.  Again, we mixed songs from the new album with material we hope might form the basis of the next album.  Compagnons de la Marjolaine and Time Wears Awa’ both got the audience singing along. Naturally, we finished with Navajos & Pirates, the title track from the new album, and we were delighted to be given the opportunity of performing an encore which we used to tell the uplifting tale of how some of the Basque children were eventually reunited with their parents after many years of enforced separation and exile.

Many thanks to Alison MacFarlane for organising the evening’s event and helping us launch our new CD at a May Day event in our home town.  It was a lovely way for na-mara to take its next step forward.

The Watford Folk Club is a welcoming folk club with excellent floor singers, a history of nurturing emerging acts and a growing reputation for putting on top quality music evenings.    They have always been hugely supportive of na-mara and we love playing there.  It is a listening and singing audience which suits our style perfectly.

With a format of two halves, each starting with club regulars performing floor spots followed by the main act, the wealth of talent in the club was illustrated by the fact there was only sufficient time for a single contribution from each floor singer. How grand then, in a wonderful mix of renditions and styles, to have three of my favourite songs performed in one evening by three different sets of performers, Raglan Road , Lord Franklin (performed by Alison Raymond and Kim Olyett) and Eric Bogle’s The Band Played Waltzing Matilda - sung with great feeling on the 100^th Anniversary of that truly horrendous battle.  Other excellent numbers were performed by Dave Auld, Linda Birmingham and Julian Mount, Liz Lawley and a host of others.

For ourselves, we played a mixture of tracks from our new CD, Navajos & Pirates, our new song The Black Widows, Scots favourite Time Wears Awa’ and a ‘re-mixed’ version of Maid of Culmore, this time using DADGAD tuning.

The arrival of members of a morris team during the half time break later contributed to a wonderful and spontaneous outbreak of dancing in the second half of the evening as we played our up-tempo version of French classic Compagnons de la Marjolaine.  As performers, we really love it when something like that happens. Thanks to Linda Birmingham for leading this.

The feedback from the evening was excellent with lots of audience members thanking us for both our music and our stories.  Many thanks to Pete Nutkin and his fellow committee members at Watford Folk Club. We thank them for their invitation to play, and we wish them well for the remainder of 2015 and hope their 2015 song competition, on the theme of Lovers and Losers, proves every bit as popular and as full of quality as previous years’ competitions have done!

This evening was the 16th birthday party for the Baldock and Letchworth Folk Club and for Alan Hewson’s well known ‘house band’ Tam Lin.  A wide variety of friends of the club came together to provide a great evening of music supplemented by a selection of wonderful cakes – real cakes and ale, I’m sure Somerset Maugham would have approved!

We did a couple of short sets.  Amongst other great players, Malcolm Hobbs performed some material from his most recent album and, just passing through it seems, nationally known folk artist Si Barron was there to provide four top quality songs.

Tam Lin, well known throughout the local area as an excellent barn and ceilidh dance band, finished the evening off with a short set  which resulted in the tables being pushed back and half the audience having a very lively dance!

A great evening all round at an excellent, friendly and welcoming folk club. 

Best wishes to the club, to Tam Lin and to the next 16 years of good music. 

Less than a week after performing at Les Ray and Deirdre Murphy’s Red Velvet music marathon, we were back in Cambridge.  Albeit at the same venue, this time we were visiting the Cambridge Folk Club to support the mighty Phil Beer.

We had last been on the same as stage as Phil when na-mara appeared just ahead of Show of Hands at the Friday main marquee event at the Bromyard Folk Festival in 2013 and it was a delight to hear that Phil remembered us from that event.   

Despite setting off early for Cambridge, it seemed as though the entire southern English road system had seized up to confound us.  Thankfully, deploying clever technology and pedal to the metal when we could, we arrived in decent time for a sound check albeit frustrated by our two-hour journey.  This was, however, put in perspective when we heard of Phil’s seven (or was it nine?) hour journey from the West Country.

Not surprisingly, a musician of Phil’s reputation draws a big audience and, not long after completing our soundcheck, the room began to fill – and it filled until it was full.

We kicked the evening off with a half hour set which was upbeat, different to our previous visit to the venue and contained some of our new material.  Writing for local Cambridge Time Out-type magazine Local Secrets, Rychard Carrington captured our contribution to the evening as follows:

“Opening the show were na-mara, a guitar and mandolin duo from St. Albans, who like to perform traditional numbers from France and Spain alongside British songs. Yet it was their two own compositions that were particularly stirring, on account of their themes: The Garden of England, about contemporary slavery in Kent, and Navajos & Pirates, about German resistance to Hitler. When folk takes on humane political concern the power of music is particularly affecting.”

We have thanked Rychard separately for his kind words and are very pleased that he appreciated the nature and focus of our music.

Phil then came on and provided the audience with a virtuoso performance, covering a wide array of musical styles played on a multitude of instruments.  We had everything from John Dowland on ukulele to Randy Newman transposed for guitar, via traditional tunes on fiddle, a small sprinkle of Show of Hands songs and a lot else besides. This was all delivered with amusing anecdotes and clever banter throughout.  Off stage, in quieter moments, he and I were even able to share stories about mopeds of yore – that’s a sentence no-one expects to write.

Once again, many thanks to our friends at Cambridge Folk Club whose support and kindness to na-mara is as long-lasting as it is firm; and it is most sincerely appreciated by us both.  We wish Phil Beer and the Cambridge Folk Club well for the year ahead and very much hope to be back in their company in the not too distant future.

For the third year running we were pleased to accept an invitation to play at Les Ray and Deirdre Murphy’s sponsored Red Velvet Music Marathon.  Les and Deirdre are committed fund raisers for cancer charities and, being musicians and well connected through the local folk communities in Cambridgeshire and beyond, have for the past three years organised a 24-hour music session at The Golden Hind pub on Milton Road in Cambridge.

Having already raised over £9,000 for cancer and hospice charities in 2013 and 2104, their aim this year was to raise another £6,000 and push that grand total up to £15,000.  The focus for this year’s charity was the Arthur Rank Hospice Charity, based in Cambridge.

This year was a twin venue event.  We were performing on Saturday evening at The Golden Hind, which some may recognise as the home of the Cambridge Folk Club but there was also a lot going on at CB2 restaurant Cafe, on Norfolk St in Cambridge.

As in previous years, it was a lively evening at The Golden Hind.  We arrived in time to see some excellent sessions by The Brokedown Palace, Penni McLaren-Walker & Bryan Causton and west country duo Heartwave. We then did a half hour slot, again taking the opportunity to bed some of our new material in, and we were then able to stay to see our friend, Laura Cherry, perform a lovely her set with her new playing partner.

Supportive to the end, a number of our friends from the Cambridge Folk Club were there helping the evening along and it was great to catch up with their news.  It is pleasing to report that they enjoyed our set since, by a coincidence of the diary, we were booked to return to the folk club proper the following Friday to support Phil Beer.

At time of writing, we haven’t yet heard whether Les and Deirdre made their £6,000 target but speaking to them after the event they remained very optimistic of doing so.  We wish them well in doing so and were pleased to be able to give support to them and the Arthur Rank Hospice Charity.

We first come across the NAF Club when it was featured in the excellent Herts., Beds., Bucks. and Cambs. local area folk magazine, Unicorn Magazine.  Located in Silsoe in central Bedfordshire and run by Ned Lawton of the very friendly and very talented music trio, Ragged Staff, the club’s name lays out its intentions clearly, namely, to provide a local venue for acoustic music beyond just the folk genre.  The full name for the club is the NAF (Not a Folk) Club.

Having recently moved to The Star and Garter pub in Silsoe High Street, it was our honour to be invited to perform as the club’s very first headliners in its new venue.    The club has been given an nice, intimate, room upstairs in the pub and, to support the opening evening, the landlord laid on lots of tasty grub at half-time. 

We arrived early and tuned up.  Ned turned up shortly after and the room then filled quickly.  Despite it being a bitterly cold night outside, the room was cosy and full with performers and audience by the time the evening got underway. 

True to its name, club members ably and readily covered a wide range of acoustic music genres in the floor spots, and one talented young man provided a couple of moving pieces on his new Gibson electric.  It was also great to see Ragged Staff play live.  They are in the middle of a busy period of gigging themselves currently and were on fine form deploying a mighty array of instruments to very good effect.

We enjoyed performing our two sets and took the opportunity to introduce more of the material we have been developing over the winter.  This included Scots song, ‘Time Wears Awa’ which we first heard from the singing of Alison McMorland (who, in turn, learned it from Willie Scott).  We also played for the first time in public our new self –penned song called ‘The Black Widows’.  This tells the story of a murderous pair of sisters who were hanged in Liverpool in the late 19^th century for fraudulently taking out multiple insurance policies on husbands and other family members, and then using arsenic soaked from fly paper to slowly poison them.  Both songs seemed to go down very well, and we were pleased with our renditions of them.

Thanks very much to the Ned Lawton and all at the NAF Club for the honour of being invited to open their new venue.  We feel sure the club will have many great nights there.  We wish the club and Ragged Staff well and sincerely hope our paths cross again with theirs in the not too distant future.

A Sunday night trip to Twickfolk to support Jez Lowe - what a nice way to start the year’s ‘gigging’! Having spent many hours in quiet rooms finishing the mixing and mastering of our new CD ‘Navajos & Pirates’, it was good to get back to rehearsals and performing.  A straightforward trip round the North Circular to a club we have long admired, was an ideal way to begin our 2015 schedule of gigs.  

We arrived in good time to the club and saw firsthand the efforts that Twickfolk’s dedicated team of volunteers put in to getting the club ready for an evening’s performance.  Albeit still at its historic home of The Cabbage Patch pub on London Road in Twickenham, the club now has an excellent new space within the building, with a great stage and excellent sound system, and the team was hard at work making sure everything was alright for the night.

Arriving early allowed us not only to have a good sound check but also to reintroduce ourselves to Jez Lowe whom we had supported at the Baldock and Letchworth Folk Club some years previous. Naturally, we congratulated him on his nomination for the Best Original Song at the BBC Folk Awards for 2015 and, in the time available, managed to have an extremely pleasant discussion with him about his touring workload and our mutual friends and acquaintances.  Speaking from experience, not every headliner artist is as welcoming and open as Jez and it was both instructive and a real pleasure to talk with him.

In terms of performance, we introduced a winter-honed addition into our set for the evening - a much reworked version of Compagnons de la Marjolaine - and generally kept everything upbeat and lively. This seemed to work well.  Organisers and audience members seemed appreciative of what we did and were very complimentary when we spoke to them afterwards.

Not surprisingly, Jez had attracted a big audience and he put on a great show, full of his trademark interesting and poignant songs.

Twickfolk is an excellent and well supported folk club and we sincerely hope we can return to the club in 2016 and show its members a little more of what we can do.

At the end of 2013, Rob and I were asked by local folk activist Alison Macfarlane to play at an evening at The Maltings Arts Theatre in St Albans to raise funds for the casting of a bronze statue in honour of local resident, Thomas Watters.  As mentioned in our blog from that event, Thomas left his job as a Glasgow city bus driver in 1936 to serve as an ambulance driver in the Spanish Civil War and, when the war finished, spent the remainder of his life in St Albans.

It is pleasing to report that sufficient monies were eventually raised to honour this brave man with a statue, and this was put on public display in November 2014 by the Museum of St. Albans alongside an exhibition on the background to the Spanish Civil War and the role played in it by the British Battalion of the International Brigade

Having been honoured once with the invitation to play at the start of the fund-raising process, it was a double honour to be asked by Alison to return and play at an event to mark the end of an exhibition where Thomas’ new statue took pride of place.  It was nice to see Linda Fryd again, who also played at the initial Maltings fund raiser. Sadly, the third act from that evening, GBH, were unable to make it this time which was a pity as Rob and I had enjoyed their set enormously when we first saw them. 

In addition to the area for the exhibition itself, staff at the Museum of St. Albans had made a medium sized room at the back of the exhibition space available for the commemoration.   They also kindly agreed to extend their working Sunday to keep the museum open and support the event.  Alison and friends provided refreshments and the room soon filled to bursting with friends and neighbours of Thomas, friends and admirers of the sculptor Frank Casey, and supporters of the International Brigade Memorial Trust. 

The evening proceeded with a mixture of speeches and music.  Alison played some lovely tunes and Linda provided an excellent set of songs appropriate to the evening.  Our own set focussed naturally on stories of the Spanish Civil War and the evacuation of the Basque children, interspersed with a range of Spanish tunes.  Frank Casey closed the evening with a moving speech telling of how he had first met Thomas and how Thomas’ humanity and wisdom had moved him deeply.

At time of writing, the exact nature of what will now happen with Thomas’ statue is unclear.  We certainly hope that the local council finds a suitable place in the town to exhibit the statue, somewhere where it can be viewed and remind local people of the courage of one of its citizens in facing down the threats of fascism. 

Many thanks go to Alison and her friends and to the staff at the Museum of St Albans for all their hard work in mounting this very worthwhile event. Thanks go also to all those who helped raise money to support the making of this important statue.  Finally, thanks go to sculptor Frank Casey for giving his skills to make this statue that helps us all remember the bravery of Thomas Watters.

A picture of Frank Casey’s sculpture can be seen at: http://www.international-brigades.org.uk/sites/international-brigades.org.uk/files/field/image/WattersSculpture.jpg

We have been regular performers at the Barnet Folk Club in recent years, and it is always a pleasure to see organiser JJ Dunne and club members.  JJ has always been very supportive of our music and we are very happy to support Barnet Folk Club.

Taking place in the atrium area of the Arts Depot near Tally Ho corner, the Barnet Folk Club venue is somewhat unusual.  It is a big space to fill.  However, with an excellent bar, a cafe- style arrangement of tables and a good p.a. system, club organisers manage to create a surprisingly intimate performance space. The evening is open to the people of Barnet and it is always nice to see an audience from 8 to 80 years old and from every walk of life.

JJ kicked the evening off with a couple of excellent Irish numbers and then Rob joined him to play Christy Moore’s Viva la Quinta Brigada – and very nice it was too.  Another club member then performed a Leon Rosselson number and then a couple of his own compositions. We then did our 45-minute set, which seemed to go down very well. 

The tradition at Barnet is for the headline artist to join JJ and finish the evening with a rousing chorus of Whiskey in the Jar.  However, since our set had not included our song ‘Only For Three Months’, JJ encouraged us to stay on stage and finish the evening with a performance of the song as an encore – something we were naturally honoured to do.

As the audience drifted away, many of them came up and thanked us for an excellent evening, which was lovely.  Some bought CDs and others joined our mailing list, which was very encouraging.  Like the audience, we too had very much enjoyed the evening and are hoping to return to Barnet in 2015 as part of the launch for our new CD.    

Back in April 2010 we were invited to play a showcase for the Friends Music Society in Welwyn Garden City.  That evening proved to be a most enjoyable experience and, having been invited this time by the Society to perform a full two times 40-minute set, we were really looking forward to going back. 

The Society runs a regular programme of well attended music concerts throughout the year. Classical music tends to dominate with jazz probably the next most common genre. Folk music appears reasonably rarely in their schedule and, as such, it was both an honour and a pleasure to be invited to perform. Having had the pleasure once before, we also knew that the Society is an excellent listening audience. 

With renovation happening in its regular performance venue, the Society is currently holding its events in the Free Church in central Welwyn Garden City. The hall is both spacious and, like many places of worship, has excellent acoustics. As is our preference, we arrived early, unpacked and tested these out.  As 6.00pm approached, the hall filled up and it was heart-warming to see some friends’ faces amongst the growing audience. 

Some in the audience were familiar with our music - either from local folk clubs or from our concert for the Hertfordshire Spanish Circle in the summer. However, for many, this was something of an exploration and they were curious to see what we would perform. 

Given the shocking dearth of folk music on mainstream English (rather than British) media, there is little chance for most to get a clear idea of what the genre might consist of these days.  However, it certainly seemed that our mixture of gritty modern and traditional tales, mixed with beautiful melodies and lively tunes from around Europe, struck a chord with many in the audience.  The result was a great deal of enthusiasm shown towards it in the room and some excellent feedback at the break and after the show. It was particular highly pleasing to be complimented by audience members on our musicality – something we work hard at and take pride in.

This was an early evening concert and, being over by 8.00pm, it allowed us to take up the invitation of a drink in the pub next door. With glass in hand, it was very nice to spend time with members of the Society and hear something of their musical activities, both here and abroad.  Both the beer and the company were good and, given the shortness of the hop home, we were still back in time to have a drink and some supper with our loved ones.

Thanks to the Friends Music Society for the invitation to perform for them again, for providing such a warm welcome and for listening so carefully and being so welcoming and generous to us.  We look forward to performing for the Society again at some time in the future and, until then, we wish its members and musicians well.