Daria Kulesh is lovely and was really helpful getting us set up as we arrived pretty late, always rushing and that makes it very stressful. We’d had a busy morning then friends over for lunch and hadn’t managed to take the dog for a walk so had to exercise her first before leaving her with Jill (Mum) for the evening. Fortunately Neil was there on time and getting his PA set up already.
Audience numbers were very low again which was a really big shame as Daria is an amazing performer and so different to any of the other music we have at the session. She speaks slowly and with passion between each number and, oh my word, the passion in her singing is all consuming. Sadly I developed a really bad headache during the evening, feeling quite sick, and had to sit at the back of the room and did manage to recover enough to sing our last number. We then got to chat to Daria for a while as she ate her meal at the end of the evening. We’d met her before just after lockdown when she came to perform at one of our outdoor sessions in the barn.
Our friend, Jade who has Downs Syndrome, is a huge fan of Bluebell Roots and music in general. Every month she is there without fail but on this occasion she was unwell and heartbroken that she couldn’t be there so once again we live-streamed the evening and I later edited and put it onto Youtube on the Bluebell Roots playlist, on the Milton Hide channel. Daria was happy too as she could share with her fans that she was live-streaming during the evening and this helped to get more viewers. It also helps with our YouTube channel to have more videos on there with a wider audience – something we’ve been concentrating since attending a series of webinars run by Help Musicians.
Floor spots were were by Nick Cant, Cliff Baylis, Jason and Lisa, Jim and Sue, and Donna Canale. We started the evening with a version of Maid In Bedlam, a traditional long that we’ve been working on to submit as part of the 365 Days Of Folk project by Oli Steadman, Jim playing the banjo. We then played our entry for the pFite competition, The Return Of The Bloodied Crow. We finished off the evening with Places to Go, People to See, an upbeat song to counter some intense numbers by Daria (beautiful, but intense), Jim on the banjo again. The camera had got jogged so we don’t appear on the video.
You can view Daria’s set on Youtube here.