Sorry ♥️

 

Middlewich '25

 Updated 22/06/2025 to include link to full interview) 

This year's Middlewich Folk and Boat Festival had moved slightly to the fields just outside of the town to mark bigger & better ambitions for this well established event.

It had been, to be honest, a stressful run up to this event with next to no communication about stage set up, let alone a stage manager or sound engineer to liaise over our tech-spec options. As a result, we got our producer-guy and good friend José Manu Arteaga to step into the breech as sound engineer to make good of what we had, I gigged for the 1st time through my "new" Marshal combo, actually rescued, almost unbelievably, from the big skips I live near to - and all was well that ended well, with a lovely warm crowd and enormous help with all the staging and equipment issues from our fellow musicians who all rallied round to help each other. 

Thanks to everyone who came along and gave us a good time (thanks too, to the mayfly - see last photo). 

Top merch team! 

Pre-Gig interview behind 
the folk stage for
Salt Town Radio 
Photo: Manu Arteaga 
(see bottom of this page) 

The bridge in our song After the Morrow Moon
uses the analogy - "we dance for just one day the free mayfly". Well, this mayfly joined us
 on stage for the duration of our show. 

Treading The Boar's

Updated 20/06/24 to include video

Our fairly short-notice return (by our standards) to The Middlewich Folk and Boat Festival saw us at the grand & historic Boar's Head Hotel, traditionally a focal point of this festival from the artists' point of view.

Thanks to everyone for packing the room nicely and giving us a fun time. 

Dave had a busy Saturday, 
depping for Greg Murray & The 7 Wonders 
as well as The BYs gig
Photo: Oli Ng

Covid Strikes - but the show goes on.

The Blue Yellows live at The King’s Lock, Middlewich. 09/11/21

It was always inevitable - on arriving at the venue, with a stage set up at the end of a large marquee and Dave having set up his largest set-up to date (including his very loud Gretsch kit and double-cajon “cocktail” acoustic kit) across the back of the stage, only to find the sound engineer (and one with particularly ‘good ears’ and extensive, quality equipment) had just returned a positive Covid test, so he was, at short notice, unavailable along with much of his equipment.

With best wishes being sent in his direction, luckily Middlewich isn’t far from Sandbach where our keys/accordion/backing vocalist Emma lives so we were able to get a workable PA set up with a combination of our equipment and that at the venue and Tim, who opened for us allowed me to go through his amp (rather than through a cab simulator, then direct into the PA which was the plan), this freed up an extra channel on our mixing desk for Dave to run an acoustic mic through and all was well.

Many thanks to those that turned out for us and it was good to see some great friends again. Thanks also to Tim Lee for his wonderful songs and joining us on percussion and backing vocals during “No Tobacco” after joining him during his set for a duet version of “I’m Just Gonna be me”.

Band photos by Tim Lee. 

The Brilliant Tim Lee opened for us.

Beaten by Brian

Funky Monk

Sometimes being a musician is playing to a full hall of people who are hanging on to every note and word, others, like for me today, it is trudging through heavy rain with heavier-still equipment on your back, sore from 2 weeks of the similar, day and night, toward one of your delayed trains, one of two trains and three buses for the day, delayed by the storm which will ultimately cut your work short that afternoon, work you'd still been preparing for at 3am that morning.
Ah well... you can't win 'em all, and when mother nature steps in, this time in the guise of Storm Brian no less, combined with an organisation understandably not wanting to put it's members from the risks of impending high winds, well, that was that.

Many at the Mexon Street Market, this being a special Halloween Themed event had put a huge amount of preparation into this, there are a lot of very disappointed people tonight, but hey ho, all you can do is go onwards and upwards...

Musician for Hire!

July 22nd 2017

Now that music forms the main part of my income, I have to get used to the idea of very short notice gigs from time to time, luckily my semi-acoustic and acoustic guitars were already packed following a more technically full-on rehearsal than usual with Rickety Wireless the night before. 

If it had been a gig with The BYs for example, I would've needed maybe an extra hour to get stuff unpacked from my strat/SG bags and into the acoustic/semi set up.

Here's what I said on my instagram account about this gig supporting the opening Mexon Street Market Thanks very much to the team there who rallied round for me and really looked after me, not something you take for granted in music!:

Where Waters Meet.

Middlewich again, playing for those lovely, not to say award-winning folk at Middlewich Music at The Bear Wych Project 2 (festival).
The weather turned unfortunately, but at least the rain looks so lovely on the canal. :)

An official poster

Some of that lovely wet stuff falling into some other lovely wet stuff.

Into 'The Groove' at The Boat That Rocks.

May 23rd, 2015; The Boat That Rocks Festival.

Much as me and my fellow Blue Yellows were sad, though not surprised to see Hayley go (she will always be part of the band-family and will be welcome to join us on backing vocals and a cow-bell or tambourine any time), we have been rehearsing with our new drummer Dave 'The Groove' Coomer. I hope he doesn't mind me calling him this!

Dave is a very spontanious and experimental musician with a broad background in drumming from brass bands, heavy rock and everything in between, and who in his own words, is 'not afraid to hit the drums'!  Dave, just as importantly to the rest of us, is a super-nice guy and a bit of a big kid so he fits in very well!

Rehearsals are one thing but this was the real thing and Dave was on superlative form and I feel now that as we've done the BYs thing with him in public, he is a fully fledged bandee! In fact, what Dave brings to the band is more than just backing us, he has brought a new energy and sounds with him, and we are finding distinct ways of playing with these novel sonic forces that are now in the ether. It's a great feeling, a new band in a sense - exciting.

The gig in question was 'The Boat That Rocks' Festival organised by the lovely chaps at Middlewich Music. While traveling to the town, the organisers were contacting me to see if we could go on at a different time due to some last-minute changes to the running order, but this looked really unlikely as we had arranged a tight schedule for everything to be in place to be ready for our set time already, as well as expecting people from afar afield as Wigan who also had plenty of other things to fit in over the bank holiday weekend. Such is the way of festival-type events, I hope they didn't take too much umbrage at my responses here. Another understandably typical issue of these kind of occasions is lack of time and space to set up, though I think it was helped by Mr Coomer's choice to use the plug-in-and-play electronic drum kit which he has been using at band rehearsals so much. I also should have brought an extension lead for my mini pedal board, the lack of which meant I had to stick with one-guitar-sound-per-song which was a major compromise for me, but I'll remember for next time!

This all turned out to be minor details anyway as the main thing is it was an event with a great atmosphere,we played well, seemed to entertain all the lovely friendly folk who turned up and we had a ball. We shortened the set by two or three songs in recognition that things were running late by now, but managed to catch a great set by Photo Booth Smile and the talented Chris Tavener (see video) who performed while we set-up behind him! 

Big thanks to Middlewich Music who did a sterling job in the very considerable organising that such things require, at times on-the-hoof, and who not only held it all together but made for a great event and atmosphere throughout. Most importantly, thanks to all those who turned up, sang along and jigged about! 



We played Farmer John ( Harris, Don F. / Terry Jr, Dewey cover), Big Low Copper Moon, Killing Me, Love is the Answer, The Owl in the Willow, Where the Sky Meets the Sea, These Boots are made for Walking (Lee Hazlewood cover), No Tobacco, No Jesus.

A bit of Country.

November 9th.

On Sunday night I had the pleasure of supporting Aussie Country star Rory Ellis in a big function room in Middlewich. As one of the Cheshire Folk promoters, organisers of the show said; his voice is like rolling thunder. I didn't realise until this night what a funny guy he is, with plenty of comedy in his songs too!

A shot taken during sound-check by Lynne Barnes
Thanks Lynne,

Rory Ellis entertaining.