A Touch of the Festival Atmosphere at Larbreck Hall

After several years of playing inside the Great Barn at Larbreck Hall Caravan Park, our annual visit coincided with some good weather this year so we played on the green behind the farmhouse and car park.

Numbers weren't quite as high as at Glastonbury, but they spread themselves around a bit and there was certainly a great atmosphere and an enthusiastic response from the audience to every number. The Eagles' Lyin' Eyes got a first play last night too and (even if I do say so myself) sounded a bit spivish rare! We normally find that any song that sounds right from the very first playing (and at the start of the evening David hadn't even heard the backing arrangement!) then it will become a firm favourite for future gigs!

So we swapped the usual backdrop of spare caravans for a backdrop of cars and minibuses, but we had a great night and started off with the sun in our eyes, ending in the glare of our mobile spotlights as the temperature plummeted and only stopped when it got cold enough for the condensation to form on every surface and we decided there were too many electrics for that to be ignored!

RIP my mic stand too - the thread stripped and I had to use it as a straight-up instead of being able to use the boom arm. An interesting experience leaning over the guitar to sing and impossible to play the keyboards and lean far enough over to sing into the mic... A visit to the music store called for before our next gig!

A quick thanks to all the people who have bought the The Sunnyside of Creeping Bentgrass album and told us it's our best yet! We must start on the next one - though first we are planning to release a folk album as we have continually had to turn down requests for one. This will be a compilation of all the folk style songs from previous albums plus a number of new tracks. No telling when we'll have The Folk Side of Creeping Bentgrass ready at this stage but we are hoping to have it out by the end of 2010.

The Sunnyside of Creeping Bentgrass

Yay! It's here at last! Our long-awaited new album that we started as soon as we finished the last one! Two and a half years in the making! Our first album as a duo.

Called "The Sunnyside of Creeping Bentgrass" it contains 17 tracks which includes a solo track of John's - a cover of The Beatles' This Boy.

Sunnyside is the name of the club near Northampton that was the site of Billy Fury's last public performance prior to his untimely death in 1983. The front cover shows the band performing at the club for a memorial concert in March 2009 and we are proud to be returning in 2010 to play alongside some of the fabulous artists who have formed close relationships on the message boards of billyfury.com

The full track listing is given below. Some tracks can be downloaded from the band's website, or the album is available mail order from:

Creeping Bentgrass
195 Palatine Road
Blackpool
Lancashire
England

Each CD costs 5 UK pounds plus 1 UK pound postage and packing to addresses in the UK and 2 UK pounds postage and packing elsewhere. Payment must be made in sterling by personal cheque.

Track List:

The Gambler
Have You Ever Seen The Rain
Sweet Caroline
A Thousand Stars
Bunch of Thyme
Crystal Chandeliers
When You Say Nothing At All
Be My Baby
King For Tonight
Green Green Grass of Home
I Can Only Imagine
Living Next Door To Alice
The Night Has 1000 Eyes
Forever Autumn
Halfway To Paradise
This Boy
24 Hours From Tulsa
.

Great Music

I thought it might be fun to show some of the albums I've collected over the years which are not exactly mainstream. I have a huge collection of music including some 400+ 78rpm records, a thousand or so vinyl 45s and around 300 vinyl albums plus lots and lots of CDs.

I've digitised a lot of the music myself - particularly the 78s which can be hard to find on CD. So here are five of my albums which you may not have heard of, starting with the one that you are most likely to have heard of. It's possibly true to say that any readers over on the US side of the Atlantic may have a better chance of having heard of some of the following.

But we start with this one- The Beat of The Brass by Herb Alpert and the Tijuana Brass.

I was still a teenager when I bought this and the music from the record was featured in a TV special recorded by the band. It's a very laid back record that starts with a version of Cabaret and ends with Herb's only vocal hit - This Guy's In Love With You. One of my favourite tracks is a jazzy thing called Slick. And a bit of trivia for you - Herb Alpert is the 'A' of A&M Records.

The Cactus Brothers

What can I say about this album? It wasn't even available in the UK when I bought it. We were in Florida on holiday in 1993 and I wanted to bring some of the music back that we were hearing on the car radio. I plucked this one off the shelves purely at random but have never regretted it and I play this album as much as any of the others in my collection. It is a country hillbilly group with a large collection of motley characters playing fast driving country rock and with a couple of finger pickin' instrumentals thrown in for good measure. It starts with a hard smacking version of Sixteen Tons and there's loads of superb tracks to savour.

Commander Cody and the Lost Planet Airmen

I was introduced to this one by John Briggs, who was bass player with a group I was in called Spiral, way back in the early 1970s. He played it to me after we had listened to our traditional playing of his 78rpm version of the Everly's All I Have To Do Is Dream c/w Claudette and it knocked my socks off. There's a track called Boogie Man Boogie with some of the best boogie piano playing I have ever heard. Again though, this is an album without a single mediocre track!

In Search of Amelia Earheart by Plainsong

A strange mixture this one. It looks like a concept album but only two of the songs are about the titular flyer and her probable doom at the hands of the Japanese. The rest are a mixture of songs of the soft folk rock type. The band featured Ian Matthews, of Matthews Southern Comfort fame and Liverpool Scene guitarist Andy Roberts. I bought it after hearing them on a BBC radio In Concert programme.

Songs From Wasties Orchard by Magna Carta

Now if you like modern folk music or even just nice gentle sounds then this album has to be one of the ultimates! Best known for their concept album Seasons, which was their second album, this was the follow up with soon-to-be Elton John's guitarist, Davy Johnstone replacing Aussie Lyell Tranter full time. (He had played on Seasons as a session musician). I went to see them at the Free Trade Hall, Manchester as this album was coming out and they were absolutely superb.

Right On The Line

It's been a long time coming!

Our new album, Right On The Line is finally ready, the covers are back from the printers and I've started production.

The album has 16 tracks and as a nod to our friends at the Billy Fury website, it has two of Billy's tracks: Last Night Was Made For Love and Somebody Else's Girl.

You can have a free listen to Last Night Was Made For Love. Call it our thanks for being so patient, we hope you enjoy the album.