So long, and thank you for the music.

This year, in some ways, has been amazing for us as a musical duo.

Highlights include supporting Mercury prize nominee Kathryn Williams, upstairs in renowned live music venue Leaf, Liverpool, playing to a huge audience, and having BBC 2 DJ Janice Long, who attended, say of us on her radio show that we were "mesmerising". Later this year we were honoured to support Louise Jordan at the Liverpool gig of her tour, upstairs in the intimate setting of the View Two Gallery on Mathew Street. Amongst those fond gig memories of this year we have to include a lovely, festival-feel gig at the Bombed Out Church (the venue in which we married in 2014) with our folk duo friends Penmann, too.

This was also the year we released our studio-recorded CD, Amateur Astronomy, to reviews which included comments like, "the sound of the resilience of humanity", "one eye on the music of the past but also one foot in amongst the stars" and " addictive and eloquent".

Ruth also wrote, and performed the violin parts for, a string arrangement on a song by The Loungs, an indie band with a large following, and seeing her name on their CD sleeve was definitely something of a buzz.

We had our single, Ella Brown, played by Mike Brocken on BBC Radio Merseyside, which was an amazing feeling.

We really thought that this might be the year we started to make some headway into finding more people who really wanted to listen to our music. We've never craved record label interest, or huge numbers of fans, or making vast amounts of money. What we've wanted, always, is to make music that we love, that really touches people's hearts, making them feel and think... and for our music to reach those people without us ending up utterly out of pocket.

Supporting Kathryn Williams at Leaf

However, after the highs of the summer, with its magical gigs, and the feeling of finally holding in our hands a copy of a CD that held our own music, our original songs, written, arranged and performed entirely by us (and made to sound fantastic by magic-working producer Andy Bowes), came the autumn.

Album sales were already disappointing by then. Given so many bands keep figures a secret at the risk of losing face, we're going to be totally open: we had 100 CDs made; we'd have preferred 50 but the cost per CD was so much cheaper at 100 that we went with that, but set ourselves the more reasonable target of selling 50. Our launch gig didn't go as well as we'd hoped, and although some lovely people ordered multiple copies of our CD to give to friends, all in all we have sold 37 to date. The CD was make or break for us, and it broke us.

Amateur Astronomy, our CD

Being online is also a demoralising experience; asking - begging, in fact - for "shares" but getting instead a handful of "likes" and even then only if we're lucky; asking people to listen to our music on Bandcamp and finding out most people stopped listening way before the end (in some ways being able to see statistics is really useful; in other ways it's a complete downer), and the awful self-doubt, and occasionally green-eyed monster, that creeps in when similar artists seem to have huge comment threads whereas we have tumbleweed. Constantly trying to work out if our music is just awful (and if so, why such good reviews?) or if we're somehow not playing the online game properly - is there a rule sheet? And what's the rule about buying music from and promoting online the music of other musicians - is it right to expect quid pro quo or not? How does it work? We've never found out any of answers to these questions, and suspect we never will.

Then came our worst gig ever; we've played to empty rooms before so it wasn't that, but it was the way the audience completely disappeared after the performer before us finished his set; we'd hoped people might stick around, but watching the large audience dwindle away to next-to-nothing before we were due to play, seeing scores of people leave as we picked up our instruments, was demoralising in a way that's hard to describe. It didn't help matters that at that point, Ruth was ten weeks pregnant, tired, and feeling a little faint; sadly the next day a scan revealed no heartbeat and shortly afterwards, the pregnancy came to an end of its own accord. Obviously the two were in no way linked, but any resilience we might normally have to cope with such musical disappointments disappeared with the ensuing grief. We also had to cancel a gig as Ruth had to go to hospital; having never cancelled a gig before we felt terribly guilty but it simply wasn't possible to play.

We thought about stopping there and then, but we couldn't quite let it go on that note. We'd planned to do a Christmas gig, as our 2014 Christmas gig had been so magical,but when we asked on our Facebook page who might be interested in attending, we only had a handful of replies so decided against it. In the end, we did play a gig at Christmas (as it was organised by someone else)and in fact, it was rather lovely. We played for half an hour in West Kirby library on the concourse to a relatively small but very interested audience, playing some carols and folk music, and just one original song. It was somewhat redolent of the very first time we'd played in public, back in 2012, as carollers, but our musicianship was infinitely better after three years of practising and playing together.

Our first ever time playing together in public, 2012

And so, that's it for Moss & Jones. We've managed to go out on a high note; the Wirral gig was a lovely experience; we even sold one of our CDs. However, we need a clean break from music, at least, from promoting, organising and feeling never-quite-good-enough about it. What we plan to do is sing around the piano at home, save up to buy Ruth a decent violin and Marc a better accordion, practice the instruments we have, and play together for fun, and get Ruth's son - Marc's stepson - involved too, if and when he wants.

It seems to us that perhaps we went about things the wrong way. Maybe we didn't reach enough of the people who love the sort of music we make; maybe we did, but our music just wasn't quite impressive enough to make them rave about it. Whatever the reason, we couldn't quite make it work for us.

Our CD, Amateur Astronomy, along with the rest of our digitally available music, will remain on sale for the next six months on Bandcamp, so if you do want to grab yourself a copy of a infinitesimally small piece of musical history from the folk music enclave, now's your chance.

We're grateful to the people who've listened to our music, bought our music, reviewed it, blogged about it, promoted it, encouraged us, given us pep talks, given us advice (yes, even unsolicited - thanks to a very dear friend who gave us the nudge to arrange our songs better), retweeted and shared our posts online, arranged gigs and put us on, let us use their venue, designed artwork for us, loaned us instruments, produced our music, organised open mic nights, bought our CD for their friends, played us on the radio, attended our gigs, brought friends to our gigs, and subscribed to our newsletter.

We suspect that one day we'll feel brave enough to put outselves out there in public again, but if we do, it won't be as Moss & Jones. If you'd like to stay with us if and when we embark on that journey, please email us - mossandjones [at] gmail [dot] com - and let us know, otherwise we'll take this opportunity to say goodbye, now, and thank you so much for the support you've given us.

"Summer won't be here forever - autumn will creep up on us before we know." - Shepherds' Delight (It's Not Time To Go To Bed), Moss & Jones.

Thank you. xx

Making Christmas bearable

Ruth writes:

Ah, Christmas. A time for giving, a time for receiving, the time when every Santa has a ball. 

Except, being serious for half a minute, it’s not always great for everyone. At least Mud acknowledged this, but listening to most Christmas songs you’d think Christmas was a laugh-a-minute affair, celebrated by everyone in the UK (if not the world) which every extended family spent together, living, as they do, all on the same street, possibly all in the same house, having an absolutely wonderful time.

But no. There are many people who find Christmas hard going.

Some people don’t celebrate it at all, and it must feel a bit weird and frankly a tad off-pissing to walk the aisles of supermarkets decked with CHRISTMAS CHRISTMAS CHRISTMAS CHRISTMAS in bright red and green fonts if it’s not your celebration.

Here in the UK, although only about 60% of the population considers itself Christian enough to put it on a census, Christmas is ubiquitous; so much so that church campaigns focus on remembering the “true meaning” of Christmas out of fears it has become too secular. Basically, if you’re not excited about celebrating Christmas you can feel like a bit of a weirdo.

There’s a fantastic article on coping with Christmas over at The F Word, which I’d recommend everyone to go and read.

I just wanted to add my two-pence worth about an issue close to my heart: not being able to celebrate on Christmas day itself. 

If you love the idea of Christmas, but for whatever reason (you have to work, or perhaps your child or children are at their other parent’s for much of or even the whole the day, other family members or friends not living nearby and so on) there’s nothing wrong with having your Christmas celebration on another day. It doesn’t have to be on the day itself. You could opt for giving presents on St. Nicholas’ Eve/Day (though without some of the other traditions associated with gift giving then), or perhaps celebrating the winter solstice, instead. Boxing day might be good too; a more relaxing celebration with turkey butties and less pressure.

Making a big, special deal of the day or days when you can all be together, rather than being miserable on the day that you can’t, is a good option. It seems slightly silly, in fact, to try and limit Christmas to one day in a year. If you were organising a meeting, you’d give delegates a range of dates and choose the one where most people were available. You might even put on more than one meeting if there were quite a few delegates. You wouldn’t tell them there was one day, and only one day, when the meeting could be held and if they didn’t attend, it somehow made them in the wrong. Why is Christmas somehow different, just because supermarkets, television and TRADITION tells us there is only ONE day?

And of course, if you do the whole “Father Christmas” thing, it makes more sense that he spreads his workload out over a few days, rather than trying to get it all done at once. You could even tell your child/ren that FC makes an extra special trip, just for them, because they’re having Christmas on a different day (if, like me, you feel uncomfortable about telling an out-and-out lie to your child/ren, there’s some pretty good advice here on how to give them the best of both worlds when it comes to Father Christmas).

And if you are celebrating Christmas, whatever day you celebrate it on, have a look at our free (or pay what you want) collection of Christmassy songs. We promise some of them are a bit miserable.

Last night, Sunday 8th December, at MelloMello

Last night we played at MelloMello for the first time. Having attended quite a few gigs there over the last year or so (and even having hazy memories of the time it was the venue of choice for a few bevvies pre-Cream, very different place back then mind you!) it was a wonderful feeling to take to the stage ourselves.

When we arrived, we found our name up in lights, which was a lovely touch!




The staff at MelloMello were all very lovely, and the sound man was brilliant, got on with sorting everything out for us and knew exactly what he was doing.

There were quite a few people in the bar we didn’t recognise, and quite a few who had come along especially to see and support us, so it was a lovely mix of people.

We played two sets; the first included some old favourites like Sally, Solemn Macramé Owl and The Stonecutter’s Boy, but also a gig exclusive; Learning a Language, a song written and played on the piano by Marc (Jones) and sung by the pair for one night only! After that, there was an interval during which the pair sampled MelloMello’s fantastic drinks (Fentiman’s Dandelion and Burdock, mmm)!




The second set was more Christmas focussed, and included our original song In the Bearable Winter, our original carol Something about Mary, and our cover of a Christmas classic. Again, there were a couple of gig exclusives; Adam Lay Ybounden and O Come O Come Emmanuel. We finished the set with our ukulele duet of Gaudete.




We gave out some free CDs containing a handful of tracks from the last year, so hopefully people will listen to and enjoy them.

We had an amazing time, and we hope those who attended enjoyed the gig too; everyone seemed to, and we certainly got some loud applause (and audience participation)! We would absolutely love to go back to perform again if MelloMello would like us to (childcare permitting, although we could always bring the little one with us; he’s dead good at gigs now, an old hand at it). We’ll be popping in now and again anyway (Anchor Porter, fentiman’s soft drinks, lady grey tea and lovely food too, mmmm!) so hopefully we might bump into one or two of you.

Our next gig is this Friday at the Kazimier Gardens in Liverpool; we’re not sure yet exactly what time we’re on but we’re one of three outfits playing and the whole evening looks like it will be brilliant, so get on down and come and hear some live music! This is probably our last gig of the year, so do try your best to get down and make it a good one!