with special guest Johnny Campbell. 28th April 2024 at the Bluebell Kitchen. This session was pretty well attended with some regulars who hadn’t been for a while, returning. Jim picked Johnny up from Polegate Station (after a ‘phone call from Johnny to remind him after he’d been waiting for a while! – he’d been busy setting up the PA as Neil wasn’t around this time) and he drove him straight to the venue which is only a couple of miles away. If you’ve not read previous Bluebell Roots reports, we run this monthly music session, often with the help of DJ Neil Povey, at the Bluebell Farmhouse Kitchen. Every month we have a featured guest and these days we are having guests travel from far and wide – Johnny had come down from Yorkshire. He was a great performer – quiet spoken and unassuming but then spoke really well about the right to roam and those who’ve campaigned to keep access open for land in this country. And his music was passionate and engaging. He had a dry, Yorkshire sense of humour which the audience really appreciated.
We started the evening with a couple of quiet songs then, following Johnny’s passionate performance, we were joined by our mate Jade and Bruce Knapp for a quick jam of Little Bit Alike to end the evening. At the end of the night we brought Johnny back home as he was staying with us and we had a long chat into the night (he and Jim sharing some Irish Whiskey) and chatted again over breakfast before we dropped him off at the station to head straight back up to Yorkshire. The collection from the Pass the Hat was enough to cover his travel plus he sold some CDS. We don’t take our merch to this event these days as we don’t want to promote our own when the travelling artists need to sell theirs. We probably will once we have the new album though!
It is hard work running a gig: welcoming guests and looking after them, welcoming the audience and often having a chat, organising floor spots, setting up the PA, banners and lighting (in the darker months) and remembering to buy and take drinks for the guest … and pick them up from the station! We have been livestreaming too recently but decided it’s just a bit too hard to do it all so didn’t this time. But it’s rewarding running Bluebell Roots and something we enjoy so we’ll keep it up. Audience numbers have been dropping off which can be a little disheartening but we’ll keep going as long as Philippa and Michael love hosting the event in their kitchen and cooking up amazing grub.