So much to report! If you didn’t make it to our recent gigs, prepare to be thrilled!
We went down a storm at the Cambridge Folk Club on the evening of Friday 27 May. Open Mic rules dictated we could only play two songs – despite many enthusiastic shouts of ‘more!’ from the audience. So we hope to return and play a longer set sometime soon. Watch this space!
1st June – a sunny first day of the month and we had a grand day out at the East Barnwell Community Centre, where local youngsters were making some ingenious instruments out of recycled materials.
Our job, to play some grooves and get them all ‘shake, rattle and roll’ ing. I think that’s a ‘phrasal verb’, Gene will no doubt confirm…
So back to the music, hopefully we didn’t disappoint, with our usual blend of blues, rock and folky numbers, plus a couple of surprise additions on a (you guessed it) recycling theme. We struggled valiantly on to the end of our recycling version of ‘Ten Green Bottles’ – despite losing count several times on the way. Nick’s heartfelt exhortation to respect and care for Mother Earth and recycle those bottles, bags and cans will no doubt stay with us all for a long time!
Finally, what a fantastic time we had at STRAWBERRY FAIR on Saturday. It’s an event we’ve long hoped to play for. Thanks to the organizers and particularly to Jay for inviting us and looking after us so well. The bandstand on the ‘Village Green’ looked fantastic with it’s multicoloured canopy and our own Street Voices banner resplendent on the side. So it was we kickstarted the fair at high noon with some cracking blues numbers.
A few songs in we played the reggae style ‘Hills Road Blues’ as a very special tribute to our friend Shayna, who has sadly passed away. Shayna came to our CD launch in November, and her dad says that of all the songs she loved that particular track. Shayna was very close to the heart of Nick and many of our fans and followers, and it was easy to imagine she was there with us in the warm and playful breeze.
Set lists are always somewhat fluid with this group, and luckily so! The early return of the parade half way through the quieter part of our set meant accommodating an interlude of rumbustuous samba beats with associated stilt walkers, belly dancers and assorted carnival characters. There was nothing for it but to pitch ourselves in to the musical tide and add our own fine and funky riffs to the melée.
It was to our usual jamming sessions as white water rafting is to a gentle paddle down the river! But, as they say, ‘nobody was drownded’ we went on to play our closing numbers, and our cheery crowd of fans loved it all, down to the last fading notes of ‘Leslisa’… ‘by the riverside’.
