Friday 5th October, A Birthday Ceilidh in Goostrey

Playing for birthday ceilidhs is great fun – everyone is there to enjoy themselves, especially the birthday girl or boy.
Tonight’s ceilidh was no exception, a lovely smiley birthday girl who had lots of nice friends – all determined to have a good time. Held in the village hall in Goostrey, not far from Holmes Chapel.
Playing with the Midgebite Ceildh Band is always a pleasure – we just have lots of fun, and I like to think that if the band is enjoying themselves then our enthusiasm infects our audience. Fun escalates: we enjoy ourselves > the audience enjoy themselves > we get positive feedback and so enjoy ourselves all the more….etc.  Not that this audience needed any more enthusiasm – they were seriously up for it!
I often worry about the future of folk music and dance, our modern ways of life seem to almost obliterate these traditions. It is something of a relief to see younger dancers enjoying themselves so much. I don’t know whether these youngsters had been previously exposed to e-ceilidh (English Ceilidh) but they really threw themselves into the evenings activities with energy that embarrassed much of the adult audience!

  Our audience having a ball

 

John (JW), plays things with strings

Emma, our demon fiddler, giving it some stick

Bill, our rather excellent drummer

The Midgies in action…with some bloke on a melodeon

 Our caller, Brian, with a smiley, happy….and rather tired birthday girl!

Two different ceilidhs

Friday 17th August

The Marmaladies have done this ceilidh before and reported back that it was fun. Held in the Friend’s Meeting House in Manchester city centre and run by the Quakers. The building is adjacent to Petersfield, site of the Peterloo massacre of 1819.
The event promised to cheerful and gay. I’m not a religious type at all, but I’ve got a lot of time for the Quakers. The event was certainly gay.
The Marmaladies were operating with extras at this event. In addition to Clur on whistles and flute, and Marian on fiddle, we had Kathy on flute – she’s a long-time member of the band but has been in Glasgow for the last 4 years, John on guitar, Mike on Cajon (and a very excellent sound man), Brian as caller, and me on melodeon.  It was a lively musical mix, with and excellent caller and a tremendously enthusiastic, and sometimes colourful audience:
An early finish (10pm) left us enough time to pile all the gear into Mike’s Tardis of a Landrover, squeeze the band in too, and then head to the Beech in Chorlton for rehydration.

 L-R: A Beech Boozer, Mike, Clur, Marian, John. Centre: beer.

It was a brilliant evening, enjoyed by everyone. I really hope we get the chance to play this one next year.

Saturday 18th August

A different band for this one – Midgebites. We were one down for this one – Bill, our very excellent percussionist, has moved up to Morecambe to look after his poorly lady. The band insisted he stay with Gina, whilst she’s under the weather. Fingers crossed for her full recovery!
We were down to John W on guitar, Emma on fiddle, me on melodeon, and Brian as caller….. but no drum. This could be a problem.
We decided some time ago that if Bill couldn’t play with us for some reason, we would turn the booking down. What to do?
A couple of hours of messing about with bits of wood came up with a stompbox. It’s simply a box that has a microphone inside. I tend to stamp my feet in time with the music – so why not capitalise on my footwork. The box worked a treat. Okay, it didn’t have the fiddly, frilly drum sound that Bill produces so well, but we had a beat for the band to ‘lock’ on to – and it seemed to help the audience too.

The ceilidh was an Anglo-Chinese wedding…well he was British, she was Chinese. The reception was at a small church hall in Hale, not far from JJ Towers. As is often the case with weddings, it was a late start. We were booked from 8pm until 11.30pm, but the speeches etc delayed kick-off until 9.30pm. It was curious to see one half of our audience dressed in sober, western attire, whilst t’other half were dressed very brightly indeed.

Not all western attire is sober!

The Bride’s brother…I think

The bride and a very proud mother 

Brian, our caller, doing his very best to explain a dance in English to our audience, many of whom only understood Chinese. It worked!

The evening went well. It was extremely hot and our little band were rather pooped by the time we left for home.

No more ceilidhs for a week or two now, there are backpacking trips on the horizon.

Sunday 15th July, Haworth

 

Freaks in the Peaks are a jolly fine bunch. They like to laugh lots, dance lots, play music lots, some of them even drink lots. And they like to go for walks.

A typical Freaks weekend will consist of 20-40 dancers and musicians ‘camping’ at a village hall in a pretty part of the country. This is usually, but not exclusively, close to the Peak District. The weekend is spent learning new dances, practicing old dances, laughing lots, and doing all the other stuff that Morris Dancers do – including dancing outside pubs. Beer may be involved at some stage.

Although my dancing days are over (it’s the knees you know) I still like to laugh, play music, enjoy the occasional drink, and go for walks. This last bit is where I come in.

The Moorish Freaks weekend was held in the Yorkshire village of Haworth, famous for Kate Bush and Timothy Taylor.  For some strange reason the side wanted an experienced walker to recce and then lead a short but interesting walk on the Sunday morning. Experienced walkers were impossible to come by….so they ended up with me.

A gentle 5 mile route was recced the weekend before the Great Event and all was deemed to be good.

On the morning of the walk, the Freaks assembled outside the Baptist Church where they had spent their weekend of frivolity, er, frivolitting. I’m sure there should be two ‘t’s in frivolitting, just one doesn’t look right…..nor does it sound right. Whatever.

A feature of these little walks is spontaneous dancing. This can happen anywhere, as long as the ground is reasonably level and there are no wild sheep around.

At a most unsuitable road junction there was spontaneous dancing.  It was good. Some car drivers stopped to watch the spectacle, others just shook their heads in disbelief before driving away – worried that they might catch something. Like fun.

A little further on, at Bronte Falls, which is close to Bronte Bridge, there was more spontaneity

Then a quick pose

Then we all went to the pub. En-route we came across some backpackers. They had been backpacking. they might even be members of The Backpackers Club - there was a club trip in the area that weekend. One of them had a Golite Pinnacle. I’ve got one of those. They’re good.

At the pub, the Wuthering something-or-other at Stanbury, there was more dancing and stuff: It’s what Morris Dancers do

Then we all went home, apart from the hard-working organisers who stayed behind to clean the church hall and leave it spick and span. What fine folks they are.

The walk was a gentle 5 miles with around 500ft of upness. Very pleasant.

I’m not sure if the Brontes would have approved.

Saturday, 23rd June. Clogging

A panic email from Les in Chorlton, who is currently Les in Camargue, popped into my Inbox yesterday: The Cloggies who meet regularly at the Beech in Chorlton were to be without a musician for this week’s Saturday morning ‘clog’ – was I available?

Well the answer had to be ‘yes’ and at 10am I was sat in the pub (tsk) as it filled up with clog-wearing dancers.

Dancing clogs (photo nicked from MEN article) 

These Saturday morning sessions were actually lessons aimed at dancers of all abilities. The teachers, Liz Calderbank and her mum, Rachel, were tremendous. They encouraged newcomers and experienced dancers alike, yet pushed them along where needed.

The dances, influenced and in some cases written by the late and great Sam Sherry, are very popular with clog-dancers in Lancashire and beyond. 

Liz Calderbank (red hair) teaching the advanced class – The Clever Clogs

I felt more than a little inadequate, playing for a class of clog-dancers is no easy task. Tunes need to be played very slowly but with absolutely spot-on timing – something I found very difficult. The sound of clattering clogs played havoc with my on-board clock. I’ll bring a metronome next time.

Rachel demonstrating a shuffle

I really enjoyed playing for these enthusiastic cloggies – it was good fun. Perhaps it was good that the bar wasn’t open.

Rachel teaching

  Now then, where can I find an old fashioned metronome?