Monday 18 January 2010

Rocking in Winmarleigh

On Saturday 16th we played a 40th Birthday Party out in the West Lancashire countryside at Winmarleigh Hall.

There's a killer of a hump-backed bridge to go over the canal once you leave the A6 by Garstang! Until you get over the top of it you have no view of what is awaiting you on the other side. Luckily it was more road...

The party was spread over the room we were in, a reception room and a bar so we had competition from the row of pumps and bottles at least, but the dance floor filled nicely once we got going and we had an excellent turn from the birthday girl's parents who sang "Danny Boy" unaccompanied with some wonderful and well practiced harmonies.

I've been struggling with a bad back and for the first time ever had to sit down for some of the quieter numbers so as to save my back for the 60s stuff and rock and roll. Recently we've added a few new songs where I play the keyboard live so I was able to sit at the keyboard for those and therefore not come across as being too pathetic (I hope!)

We played a few new numbers which got good responses - measured not only by people applauding but by other people coming into the room to listen and by people interrupting their own conversations. Two in particular which gave us a real boost by the audience reaction were Westlife's You Raise Me Up and Billy Fury's Lost Without You.

Other songs played for the first time at this gig were Love Grows Where My Rosemary Goes and The Beatles' Ticket To Ride.

We were struck when we came out at around 1:00am how clear the sky was and how many stars were in sight. Living in towns with all the light pollution from street lighting makes you forget to look skyward once in a while!

4 comments:

  1. I want to hear the new songs, when do you plan to record them?

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  2. I imagine they will get recorded at some point, but not sure when as yet. A new album is just out which took 2 and a half years. Recording each song takes around 4 hours for me to do the instruments then another hour to get voices sorted. Then post mixing and balancing will take quite a while so in real time that's about three days all told. Which means three weeks minimum because it only gets done at weekends and of course we can't be doing it every single weekend. That's why it takes so long as all the work is done by ourselves, we don't use studios or technicians. Once a song is "finished" we listen to it on hi fi, take it out in the car stereo, listen on headphones and then there's normally at least two more sessions of remixing before we're happy. And with around 6-7 hours in the repertoire we have plenty of songs left unrecorded. But I like the new ones a lot so they stand a good chance of being up near the top of the list! First to be recorded though is a bonus song for the new album that we said we would put on there.

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  3. You know...in this photo David looks a lot like a younger Rolf Harris! That's meant as a compliment David. Oh shit, your better looking...not that I'm inclined ....shit, fade out on guy with foot in mouth.

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  4. I actually think David look nothing like a younger anyone - possibly excepting Methuselah...

    On the other hand in the top photo I think he has a look of Eric Clapton (which earned me enough brownie points to make the gag about Methuselah...) heh heh...

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