The Smallpiper Blog

We've had the most fantastic couple of weeks! We spent the latter half of last week rehearsing with Cath and Jay aka Mundy-Turner and then playing at the first BlueBell Inn mini-festival. The sun shone, the audience turned up (yay, thank you!) and we had a fantastic time. We loved playing with Cath and Jay and are now making plans to appear on their new album to be recorded this summer. We gave a short mid ceilidh taster concert, guitar workshop, Meet the Artist and then evening performance on Saturday night. This was the first outing for the new electric upright double bass and it didn't let us down! You can see it in the picture on the left. We're still waiting for any pictures of us all playing together, so if you have one, mail it to us, we'd love to see it!!

Wednesday night saw us at the Famous Willows folk club. We had a great time there in the new venue of the Football club. Thanks to Chris for inviting us down, a fantastic evening! This weekend we're at the Crawley Folk Festival, you can catch our workshops, Scottish Smallpipes, Tune Writing and Guitar chords on Saturday afternoon and Sunday morning. We hope to see you at one of those! Come and say hello!

ACOUSTIC MUSIC FESTIVAL AT AWARD-WINNING PUB

Music has always been a strong focus for CAMRA award-winning Hempstead pub, The Bluebell Inn, and it's about to grow even stronger with their first Acoustic Music mini-festival on 23-24 June 2006.
Events will be based around the Bluebell Inn, which won regional PUB OF THE YEAR in 2005 and the nearby Hempstead Village Hall, both situated on High Street, Hempstead, near Saffron Walden, Essex, CB10 2PD.

The festival's featured artists, acclaimed duo MUNDY-TURNER, are marking the occasion of their first 10 years touring together with a special concert called CELEBRATE-10! on Saturday 24 June at 8pm.

"The Bluebell Inn has become a home away from home for us during our tours in the UK," explains Cath Mundy, one half of the Mundy-Turner duo. "It’s been our most regular venue over the last 3 years. We love it! There's an authentic traditional old pub atmosphere that is so rare these days. Audience support for music at The Bluebell has just been fantastic - there's always a great crowd. We couldn't think of a better place to celebrate our 10th anniversary."

The husband-wife duo of Cath Mundy (vocals, violin, piano) & Jay Turner (vocals, guitar) have delighted audiences with their powerful vocals, soaring harmonies and emotionally-charged songs, both here and abroad since forming in Australia in 1995. In 2004 they toured the UK with folk-rock legends Fairport Convention, and have also supported Rolf Harris and The Corrs. Special guests at the festival are Vicki & Jonny, a young duo currently taking the folk world by storm. Vicki is one of the best pipers in the business, able to seemlessly veer from soulful airs to driving up-tempo tunes, aided by Jonny’s brilliantly inventive guitar work.

The festival will kick off with a Ceilidh in the Village Hall with the Simon Ritchie Band on Friday 23 June (8pm) and continue with a programme of fun workshops & intimate concerts with Mundy-Turner and Vicki & Jonny on Sat 24 June. Musos are welcome to join the acoustic session in the bar.

Entry to the Ceilidh is £8. An All-Day Saturday Ticket is £20, giving entry to three workshops and two concerts. Tickets are available for individual events.

For the full workshop & concert programme, visit - mundy-turner.com
To book, contact Rod or Marion Stokes at The Bluebell Inn, phone 01799 599 199.

It arrived last night. My new bass!!!! It's going to take some getting used to, but I hope it's the right thing! Everytime I start to get second thoughts I remember how I felt about taking the bass to Miskin. It's far safer not to take my big old lovely bass and this one collapses so that we can still sleep in the campervan! I have been thinking long and hard about the pros and cons of going electric. People saying, "isn't that heavy" and "does that hurt your back carrying that" certainly were right in many respects. The biggest factor does have to be the space in the van. It was a real pain!! To get the bass in the car you actually had to take the roof down (it's a convertible). So anytime we played bass, we had to take the van. I never meant to play the bass in the folk world, but as we play with more and more people it seemed the sensible thing to do. This new bass is smaller than my fullsize bass, this one is 3/4 size. So it's taking time to get used to the smaller finger spacing. THe action is lower and being electric I think I'm going to have to learn to play more quietly! It's a more subtle approach. It's strange adjusting the volume by twiddling nobs rather than playing quietly or loudly. I'm sure I'll get there! The first outing for the bass will hopefully be in a months time at the Mundy Turner 10th anniversary festival at Hempstead, Essex on 24th June. We're going to be collaborating with them on a few numbers, so if you'd like to see the bass, make sure you come up and say hello!

Last friday we played with Cloudstreet at the TIthe Barn in Sproughton, Suffolk. A lovely old barn that's been given to the village and has been renovated by them. The barn is a perfect venue for a folk night, I can imagine that ceilidhs go down a complete storm there. For us, this gig was special as we don't get much chance to perform with John and Nicole as they whizz around the country and then back home again! We'd practiced a couple of tracks from their new album Dance Up the Sun and we sang about washing miners clothes with gusto! In some respects it was also a sad concert because it might be the last time that my lovely old bass gets played in a folk context. I decided at Easter that I was too scared of taking it out, it's old, needs repair, is big and heavy, is quite expensive and so I've decided to go portable. More about that at the end of the week.....

Last week we played at two clubs, The White Horse Folk Club, in Highworth near Swindon and the Walthamstow Folk Club in London. The Whitehorse club is a lovely little club that runs out of the back of a pub in a tiny room. Everyone there is so up for singing and playing nad everyone seems to know each other. I especially loved the duo with the disappearing capo act, if you visit the club, definitely request that! Walthamstow is quite local to us, just a short hop down the M11. We were very lucky that our friends John and Nicole had arrived from Australia the day before and we were able to put some harmonies together for them to join us on stage with. Fantastic fun. It was also a momentous day as we played (for the first time since being a pub band) standing up. I coped ok, but did have to sit down for the harder couple of pipe tunes! I definitely need to practice standing up more!

This weekend was the Stortford Music Festival. I reckon it's the most local festival to us, only being about 25 minutes drive away. The festival used to be the woodworks festival, but has changed it's name and indeed the way it runs things. Now it's a field based festival with a stage that has been built by members of the committee. In fact it was the most amazing stage! Built from logs from the nearby forest with a tarpaulin over the top. Fabulous! The weather held off, but the whistling wind kept snatching the air away from my whistle! The afternoon we were there there were varied acts on from blues guitarists to the Essex Babes (they're in the picture). They were really cool all dressed up in the medieval cosutme and medival songs, really cool!

We found ourselves driving up north from our home in Essex and up to Lowestoft. This lovely folk club is in the eves of a massive wind turbine. I was amazed at the size of this thing and how much power it kicks out! We had some wonderful support slots, the most memorable of which I think was the "oi" song. Fantastic! There are lots and lots of old posters on the walls of this club and it's great to go through spotting artists that have appeared at the Waveney. My favourite has to be Gordon Tyrell, his picture looks like it was taken a very long time ago!! Slightly disconcerting, but cool, was to be able to see the old seriouskitchen poster looking down at us from across the audience! It's been a while since I last saw one of those!

.... we made the journey from Gosport and Fareham to Miskin, driving crosscountry, in around 3 hours. Arriving at 11:30pm we got straight to the bar and then to the session tent. Miskin is a special festival for us. This was our first MIskin and it was here that we first really began to sing in the duo. Each year we play a different collaboration. The first year I brought my bass along and we played with the Australian band Cloudstreet. Last year we played with Harriet and Colman from Lusca and this year we played with Harriet and Colman and Isambarde. In short, each year it gets bigger and louder and this year with eight of us on the stage it was a huge sound. We had a great time! Who knows what will happen if we get asked to play next year! My favourite bit of the festival, other than such friendly people, the great sessions, the singing and the big band thing, is most definitely the parade! We parade down the scout field and back again. Singing songs and playing pipes. It is such a fantastic way to start the festival season. We love it!!! This year we also performed the tune that Jonny wrote called "Andy Jacksons". Ann from Tarrantella presented a cross stitch version to Andy. Much emotion was had!

What a weekend we just had!! Gosport and FarehamFolk Festival and Miskin at Easter. We kicked off with an evening with Doug from WildGoose". Much wine was consumed! Once we made it down to Gosport on the Friday morning we kicked off with workshops (tune writing and guitar accompaniment). (The curry from the night before made it an interesting experience, but hopefully not noticed ... was that out loud, sorry too much information!) We kicked off the lunchtime concert and also ended an afternoon concert. Both had a wonderful audience. We met up with our friends from Isambarde, this weekend we both did the same run, Gosport & Fareham to Miskin, but on different days. We had a really lovely day down in Gosport a really buzzing festival. Fantastic fun, we were sorry that we couldn't have stayed longer, but we had to dash off on the same day up to Wales ....

Last night we played up in Ripley for the Folk Friendzy Dance Group. They were totally amazing! 48 young dancers ranging from about the age of 5 up to 19. What was the most amazing thing was that this was run by Carole who is only 19. To get 48 dancers on stage of such diverse ages and having them dancing a whole evening of routines was utterly stunning! They danced morris, clog, ribbon, garland and Irish. I loved the versatility of the whole show, the colours, the lighting. The choice of music (including Soar patrol, Crosscurrent and I think Kathryn Tickell, oh and us..) This was the first time that I've played for dancing and I have to say I was a bit of a nervous wreck! I'm very used to playing with Jonny and he can take any errors that I make in his stride, not so for this evening! I found my camera cable, behind the sofa, so I've added a pic! If you get a chance to go and see Folk Friendzy, do, they're fabulous!

Next weekend we're doing the big dash, Friday is Gosport and Fareham and Saturday is Miskin at Easter, maybe see you at one of those!
(^_^)
Vicki & Jonny

We've joined the technical revolution .. again! So many folkie friends of mine have been raving about myspace that we thought it was time to go and have a look for ourselves. It's funny because we did all this 10 years ago with mp3.com. This time however we know so many more people and it's wonderful to jump from space to space adding friends and making contact. We've had messages from other folkies that we've met on the circuit, even swapped mp3's. It's building a community. I'm having such fun looking at the friends pages, adding someone, visiting their page, adding another friend. I'm hearing tracks that I wouldn't have heard and generally having a ball of a time! So if you fancy having a look at our myspace go for it! Then look at our list of friends and visit one of them and so on and so on! There is a blog facility on myspace, so I'm going to blog there too, but I think this blog is far more versatile, so we'll see! Anyway, go visit myspace!

Last night saw the launching of George's brand new album For My Next Trick. We had such a great time! I was depping for Miranda Sykes (double bass) and Anahata ('cello), but all on the bass. As I've not played the dusty heights of thumb postition on the bass since just after I left music college I had to do some serious practise! It was soo worth it though. I loved playing the bass for the launch and I totally thank George for thinking of asking me to dep! The launch was held at the Travellers Rest theatre, which luckily had a stage big enough to hold all the musicians. For the finale we had George, Myself, Jonny, Saskia, Chris and Jude from Isambarde, Terry Silver and Chris Flegg on stage. It was an awesome sound! George as always was fantastic! I'm looking forward to playing for him again sometime! Next week sees us in Derby playing for a dance group called Folk Friendzy, should be fun especially as they're dancing to our music!
(^_^)
Vicki & Jonny

Bodmin Folk Club, it took us only about 6 hours to get down from Essex to Cornwall. We took the scenic route via the A303, very very pretty. It always feels a little like going on holiday when you drive past Stone Henge! Bodmin folk Club is in the back room of a pub, pretty much an annex rather than just back room. It was very warm and friendly, the banter from the audience was wonderful, only bested by the singing! It always amazes me when an audience sings along to the choruses of songs and even tunes that they're unfamiliar with, amazing!! Thank you! We're now practising hard for George Papavgeris and his CD launch on Monday, I'd best get back to the bass!
(^_^)
Vicki
PS I didn't give my cold to Jonny, he escaped and I recovered enough to be able to sing without coughing!