Dear all,
Well firstly thanks once again to the fantastic Seth Lakeman and band for a wonderful time guesting on their tour. I so enjoyed playing the songs I played on with them and it was a great experience. I hope it’s not the end of the Seth collaborations, we shall see what happens! Buxton and Birmingham were both wonderful anyway and the audiences were fantastic. Thanks to all those who’ve twatted and facebooked at me about the gigs, I’m glad to have made any kind of difference.
Fantastic news as well – I have recorded my banjo part on the new single by the Levellers. I can’t tell you anymore about the single yet as it’s not out, but I can tell you I did the session some time ago and it was amazing! They are top guys and it was tremendous fun and best of all, I’ll be guesting with them on the song at two gigs of their UK tour in Nottingham and Leeds which will be fantastic I’m sure. The gigs are on the…gigs page, funnily enough.
Exciting as all this is, I do have to pay special tribute to my gig last night. I played a charity gig in Stafford for Eclipse, a wonderful local charity supporting bereaved children. The video that was played during the gig was really something else and I’m not ashamed to say I was immensely moved. The music was also great – three acts were on before me Charlotte Pearson, an astonishing opera singer from the town followed by Crisis What Crisis with their cracking funk jams while my old chum James Baskett and his band Clutching at Straws were terrific and have some superb original songs up their sleeves. I really enjoyed my set. I often feel this blog is a place for me to say the truth about how things are. I’ll be honest, they’re not good for reasons I’m not going to go into but I have been immensely struck in the last month or two by what amazing friends I have, a fabulous girlfriend and a fantastic family. They chose to end the concert last night with a rendition of You’ll Never Walk Alone. It was eerily appropriate at the moment for quite a number of reasons and I shed a tear or two, but many people are standing with me. Sorry it’s not a daft little rant or story this time, but I needed to say this and I thank all you regular readers for the support you give me.