Bluebell Roots with The Browns.
Jim arrived early at the Bluebell Farmhouse Kitchen to set up while I stayed at home to sort out our spare room as our son was coming to stay the night. I managed to persuade Mum to come round to the gig and she really enjoyed it – we took Megan the dog too and she was remarkably well behaved. We hope to be able to take her (the dog) to more gigs once we’ve moved to Hastings (that’s the plan!) so it was good to see she’s calmed down a lot, no longer barking every time anyone claps!
Neil was working so couldn’t arrive until the interval so Jim was in charge of the sound and I arrived in time to help get it all set up. We were recording audio files of the whole evening this month, rather than a video. Annie and Vernon, The Browns, were there and having a chat with Philippa and co. We had a small audience of 14 plus us 2 , The Browns, Philippa, Michael and Marylin on food prep. It did mean that the floor spots got a slightly longer set which was good. We included 2 of our new songs in our set – Molly Mothballs and Spoil The Game. The Browns set was really lovely and they went down well with a good collection in the hat (and online) as testament to how well. Annie had been poorly at the start of the year with whooping cough followed by a collapsed lung and this was her first live gig since but she did incredibly well. They are a lovely couple from Norfolk and were tying in a visit to local family while they were here. We met at the Folk off the Pier Festival in Cromer a couple of years ago.
We decided, to try to revitalise interest in the Bluebell Roots and to add a bit of ‘value’ for the performers, we’d start a monthly accompanying podcast – something we’re all interested in anyway and, if you hear Neil, you’ll know he’s really good at that kind of thing! After everyone had left, Neil set up his podcast mics and we sat around the table recording an interview with The Browns. The next morning Philippa and Neil came round to ours and we recorded some more and decided on which songs to include in the podcast. Jim created a ‘jingle’ and Neil did all of the editing, publishing it on Mixcloud the following Sunday.
