June 30th - A Slice Of Nice... yum.

Sunday afternoon.
I wasn't sure what to expect in the dark, but very cosey vaults of The Blackdog Ballroom in central Manchester. I say cosey, there were candles galore and squishy seating and just a couple of friendly organisers when I arrived out of the humid conditions above. The whole thing is in aid of the fantastic work of Forever Manchester who help local communities of this great city. Soon, others started to arrive and the room started to  fill up with music lovers and musicians... and what talent! I hope to catch up and hear the other artists who I missed this time round, but those I heard where inspiring.
I met Tiki Black who I have heard a lot over the internet and was delighted when i found, a few weeks earlier, that she would be doing a set so I would finally get to hear her live. Her debut album will be out soon and a "must buy" if ever there was one. 
First on was 19 year old Darien Crossley from North Carolina with a sweet, sweet voice and a nice way with mellow, dreamy lyrics and guitar with the odd nod to "bitter and twisted" from one so young. Very contemporary stuff. Then I caught Alex Carrington who was also great, but a complete contrast in style with jazzy chordings, and very percussive which got all the heads nodding and feet tapping.

Tiki Black, Majestic voice and piano.

Then came Tiki, the recordings I've heard were not to set me up for a disappointment, far from it. Tiki's performance was nothing less than mesmerising, majestic and deeply soulful. Her music and songs contain the wisdom of the mountains, or should I say volcanoes. As I said, her debut album is a must - but go see her live if you can too.
My own set, as with everyone else's was blessed with a warm, attentive audience who clearly love music, hanging on to every note during the performances and applauding enthusiastically after every song. What it's all about! Thank you to all involved and all who came along!

 Oh... there were cakes too!

June 15th - Return to Middlewich & the return of the band.

Our audience, not long before going on.

I think this was something like the 6th Middlewich Boat and Folk Festival gig in a row and as a firm favourite of all the band an ideal setting for the first outing of The BlueYellows in many a moon following the birth of young Casper to Em, our keyboardist, backing vocalist accordionist and all-round good-vibe-giver.

Although a relatively local gig to me, as someone who lives on a narrowboat, I wanted to do it properly and take my floating home with me, and this meant something like an evening (Wednesday) plus an entire day (Thursday) to get there. It was well worth the relative "dash" to experience the festival properly.

Saturday morning meant an early start though to get over to Sandbach, to Emma and Vincent (the van) to visit various corners of Staffordshire and Cheshire to pick up band members and instruments, thankfully we could guarantee the quality of a great PA and sound engineering from Nick Bayes so didn't need the full load-in we normally do. With memories of playing in torrential rain and strong winds the previous year, but nevertheless to a packed audience, we had no doubt the Middlewich lot would give us a good time in this much more summery conditions. To be honest our time away did show, a little rusty here and there but we played with gusto and had a great time, the lovely Middlewich Festival crowd did to, they never let us down! We must also say a massive thanks to Andrew Tranter again of the superb Alt-Folk outfit Headsticks for hosting the stage.

On Saturday night I played a little, solo and jammed along with a load of great musicians at a traditional back-room get-together which included some great young fiddle players including Eddie Ogle and one of the guys from the folk act, Blue Horizon (I tried to find them on facebook and elsewhere on the internet, but there are so many organisations and bands of the same name I ended up giving up, can anyone help me here?). This went on until getting on for 3.30am before realising I had to make a very early start on Sunday morning to get the boat back to base!

Sadly all these happy memories of the event were marred in no small way by the revelation that a close friend's boat had been destroyed by fire (almost certainly in an arson attack) plus I later found out about the passing away of someone very close to a previous organiser of the event. Very sad.

Hayley, photo by Stephanie Burgess-Arteaga.

Emma,  photo by Stephanie Burgess-Arteaga.

Me,  photo by Stephanie Burgess-Arteaga.

An as-ever smiley Simon,  photo by Stephanie Burgess-Arteaga.

My "hotel room" view!

Some mini-festival goers! 

A Chap, a very nice one too, I just  had to take his photo.
This festival attracts some very quirky, intelligent, individuals.
This guy says it gets more and more magical every year.
I think he might be right.

June 24th-27th - May Bank Holiday Festivals.

Photo by Dave Myatt, from Monday's Folk N' Ale Festival at The Old Brown Jug.

Saturday Daytime, Crewe Live Festival.
The 1st time The BlueYellows played together since last September and the first time we were all in the same room together in fact since a Pre-Christmas lunch (oh alright piss-up). This was a rehearsal, the first one since a break brought about through the birth of Lovely Casper, Emma's and hubby Pete's new son. I was expecting things to be a bit ropy but we slipped back into it like a duck to a mucky canal. In places we were actually "in the zone" and I forgot all sense of anything sensible, should be good...

Saturday Night, Crewe Live Festival.
Now much as I appreciate being put on for this solo performance, the circumstance here were "a bit ropy", the football was on the TV of the Corner Bar which was the evening's venue and I was to wait for half-time before my shortened set or potentially suffer the wrath of drunk football fans... not fun but "the show must go on" and it was one to put down to experience, you know with the best will in the world of all concerned sometimes you'll have a bit of a crap night, I did get some good feedback through from members of the small audience both then at the gig the following night.

Sunday. Crewe Live Festival gig 2
 An altogether much better experience, not only a listening, attentive audience but lots of friendly familiar faces including Abby and Mat from the superb 1980s style, electro-outfit Human Condition who played later that night. 

Bank Holiday Monday. The Newcastle-Undr-Lyme Jazz and Blues Festival (Subsection The Old Brown Jug Folk N' Foam Festival.
A great day/and night sub-festival organised by Andrew Tranter from the Agit/Folk band currently making waves, Headsticks. Again a lovely, attentive audience, some great acts (including Headsticks themselves) and lovely ale too, only the weather was dodgy at times but... this is a festival in England... onwards and upwards.... Special thanks to Tina Newbury of Simon J. Newbury Photography and Dave Myatt who has been taking great music-scene photos since the 1970s for the photos. Cheers to them and everyone involved in making it a fun weekend.

The Official T-Shirt.

Photo by Dave Myatt.

May 17th - Lounging with Albert

May 17th saw a new venue for me, The Albert Lounge in Shrewsbury, more a wine bar than a raucous rock-club, although they did a nice line in real ales as well :) 

As with any 1st-time, new venue I wasn't sure what to expect, it turned out to be a quiet place where most punters regarded the live music aspect more "background music" to their relaxed conversations, not what I'm used to but luckily they were very polite and the surroundings were lovely, also luckily for me, there were a few friendly faces around. Nick Bayes (a very busy man in music circles not least as regular bassist for Headsticks and Phil Maddocks as well as a regular session player for many bands) was my sound man and driver for the event and my friend Verity Gray not only came along but, as a very talented photographer, provided these great shots from my performance. Have a look at some of Verity's other brilliant shots on her blipphoto site at http://www.blipfoto.com/Snowy5 Thanks Verity!

Why Rosie is called "Rosie" Photo - Verity Gray.

Photo - Verity Gray.

Photo - Verity Gray.

Photo - Verity Gray.

May 5th - A Big Situation.

The Bank Holiday Weekend's Big May Birthday was held at Leek's rather marvelous Foxlowe Arts Centre by those equally marvelous people at The Situation. The acts were just too consistently fab to do them justice here and if you were one of the crowd, THANK YOU for being such attentive, enthustic music fanatics. Cheers!

Here's an article from The Leek Post on the event, featuring me on a pile of rubble!

Sally Pepper-one of many engaging performers.

http://www.leek-news.co.uk/Leek-News/19-acts-play-at-birthday-bash-07052013.htm

Official Poster, thanks to The Situation & Foxlowe Arts Centre.

Leek is beautiful, but I also liked
the dark, Satanic mills around the
corner.

My carbon-neutral travel plan!

Lovely Leek.