I didn’t have the best end to last week or the beginning of this. All was well down town on Saturday lunchtime where Janet and I hummed and haaahed with financial advisors at our bank. Picking up bits and pieces around town afterwards was fun, in a disconnected male kind of way, too. But later, getting ready for a return visit to my friend John Jeffrey’s great club in Whitley Bay, I felt something wasn’t right. I’ll spare the details but suffice to say it wasn’t swine flu. The bumper pack of toilet tissue turned out to be a wiser investment than any earlier discussion at the bank. Let’s leave it there.
It was a privilege to “open” for Chris Milner at The Daleside in Croxdale on Tuesday. To be perfectly honest with you, I was the only one in the audience with a guitar and a handful of songs at the start of Chris’s show. So I was called up. It was the second time in a week that we’d been at the same venue. I opened for him ‘properly’ in Newcastle the previous Wednesday. I knew of Chris long before Graeme Carroll of Brother Crow introduced us at the beginning of 2007, and since then I’ve really warmed to his gentle, often quite personal and thought provoking songs. His performance, whilst always good, confident and measured, seems to me to be getting better every time I hear him. Testament to this is his latest CD, Four Fields Meet, which contains some of his finest material to date. There you go. Check out www.myspace.com/chrismilnerpaderevski
And so it was, to a larger than usual audience consisting of a handful of notable regulars, our MC, Gary Wingfield, welcomed, too, an international exchange party from Russia. Chris put out two superb performances to richly deserved applause. I played my own songs – Strange Kind Of Way, Don’t Kiss Me Like That and Why Don’t You Leave Town and threw in a Saw Doctors classic, Share The Darkness, for good measure.
Chris Milner was in the audience at the double header concert with Trí and Acoustica on Friday. We were also blessed with the presence of other musical luminaries…. John Wrightson, Joan Edmundson, Keith Morrison and Kyle Thompson. There was a sizeable crowd of Gary Grainger’s co-workers from County Hall in Durham, a couple of colleagues of mine from BNI, relatives and friends of David Pratt, and all manner of ticket buying others ranging in age from teenagers to septuagenarians.
Those reading this who’ve ever taken responsibility for organising major events will know of the anxieties that grow as the event date looms. Will we sell enough tickets? Will people turn up? Have we remembered this, that an’t tuther? In the end I had no need to worry. The event exceeded all expectations with a wonderfully appreciative crowd swelling the room in the main dining hall of the Park Head Hotel in New Coundon. My friend Bill Oxbrough MC’d the proceedings with aplomb, humour and expert time keeping, introducing a quartet of excellent floor spots from Fools Gold, Tom Rowan, Len Rowland-Jones and Dave Stephenson, before the first concert act of the night – Acoustica (www.itsacoustica.com) .
Acoustica, as expected, were on top form for their entire hour long set. This highly entertaining duo, Andy and Cath Higgins, held the appreciative audience spellbound with an accomplished mix of songs met by rousing cheers and applause at the end of each. Their faultless performance, comprising a variety of instruments from guitar, fiddle, accordion and covering wide ranging genre and styles was, at times, breathtaking. I love them. You can catch Acoustica at The Bridge in Newcastle on 23 November where they will be playing their last gig of the year before settling down to complete the work on their next album.
A short interval permitted the draw for a selection of prizes from which seventy pounds was raised for the evening’s chosen charity – Cancer Research UK. And then Bill introduced our band, Trí, reminding the audience that the event marked the final show for us.
And we were off. It was just turned ten by now and we matched the anticipation of the audience with our unusual mix of contemporary folk, rock and blues with a hint of country and our own stuff thrown in. Now, naturally, it would be prudent for someone else to say how we went down, but I do know this….there are some nights when the connection between stage and seats is substantial; where the relationship twixt performer and audient is as one. That’s how it felt on Friday. The crowd drove us along during our rockier stuff and they danced and drank and danced some more as the mood took hold. And yet, when we played the quiet and thought provoking Butterfly, there wasn’t a whisper to be heard in that room. Captivating. We played for just over an hour and got two encores. Gary then led an unrehearsed free for all including snippets of Gloria, Shaking All Over and Born To Be Wild. The twelve bar Quo classic, Bye Bye Johnny, concluded what was becoming a never ending coda.
Allow me to commit to writing my heartfelt thanks to the following for all that they offered, sacrificed and contributed…
Andy & Cath Higgins from Acoustica
Carol, Steve and Steve from Fools Gold
Tom Rowan
Len Rowland-Jones
Dave Stephenson
Bill Oxbrough
Claire, Simon and Tony and their wonderful staff from The Park Head Hotel
Gary Grainger
David Pratt
My loving wife, Janet for keeping me upbeat in the mad build up to it all
My sons Daniel and Padraic who became unpaid roadies
And all those fantastic people who bought tickets, came along, ate, drank, listened and danced and made the first PHOM concert such a resounding success.
Thank you, one and all.
For pictures and performer details go to the album titled Trí and Acoustica at www.myspace.com/parkheadopenmic
And that’s it for this week. I had my first mandolin lesson yesterday (Saturday) in the hands of a very patient, Les Cameron, husband of Barbara Helen. Today, on this remembrance Sunday, it’s a cloudy but bright afternoon over New Coundon and I’m looking forward to the coming week. On Tuesday I have the second rehearsal with David and Ken in our new band, Dead Cat Bounce. Gary’s ‘Blues Show’ is back on Bishop FM as is Terry Ferdinand’s Folk Show. Check out them both at www.bishopfm.com or, if you’re really local, dial in 105.9fm
Best wishes and thanks for reading. All comments, views, opinions etc are especially welcome.
Phil