Rest and be thankful

We played a couple of gigs at the end of the summer... one at the Rendezvous, St. Helens, as part of a vintage fair (we played and sang 'oldies' on the piano, rather than our usual folk repertoire), one at Victoria Park, St. Helens (which we also compered) and one at The Brink, Liverpool, as part of Hope Fest.

The first was great fun; the second was very hectic and stressful but we appreciated the opportunity to reach a potentially wider audience; the third was very quiet but those who were there seemed to really enjoy themselves, and it was for such a good cause.

Unfortunately very shortly after those gigs Ruth became ill and had to attend hospital (nothing, we hasten to add, to do with any of the gigs).

Ruth's slowly but surely on the mend now, but it has given us a chance to reassess what we're doing with Moss & Jones. Obviously, we would still love for you to buy our CD (and if you have already, and you liked it, feel free to write us a little review on your blog, or Facebook, or twitter and @ us in) and we still welcome radio and podcast airplay, but in terms of gigs, we're going to have a little rest. We normally put on a Christmas gig, full of carols and Yuletide songs, but unless people are really clamouring for such a thing (or unless a venue wants to pay us to put on such a gig and help with the organisation...) we're going to take a break from gigging until the new year, although you can download our Christmas carol from last year if you like to 'tide you over'!

Come the new year, we want to try to build up more of an audience, so that when we put on gigs ourselves we can be assured of a reasonable turnout. We're going to take it all 'back to basics' - go to more open mic events, attend folk clubs, possibly even go busking... we're going to use the interim time to practise our instruments, and just play together for fun. It's so easy to lose sight of that side of things, what with having to have a 'social media presence', an up-to-date blog, a CD to flog in order to try to at least break even, 'networking' to try to do, and so on... it's meant to be fun after all.

When we started this, making music together, we agreed that if it ever stopped being fun all together, we'd stop. To be honest, we nearly did... but instead, we're going to make it fun again.

See you very soon!
Ruth & Marc
xx

We have finished recording... now for the rest of the to-do list!

Yesterday we went to Catalyst Studios, St. Helens, for our final recording session for our mini album, Amateur Astronomy.

We started with our version of Schiarazula Marazula, a mediaeval dance which probably originates in the Friuli area of Italy. Ruth discovered this tune last year and immediately thought it was perfect for us to cover. Our version stays the same tempo throughout, and we've added lyrics to one of the repeated phrases. As Marc bought Ruth a psaltery for Christmas, it seemed a shame not to use it; we also added bodhran, ukulele (plucked), descant recorder and some backing ahhs and oohs.

Ruth arranged it to have an additive nature; due to this and the way it builds, organising the different parts on the mixing desk was a bit of a challenge, so once Andy (the producer) had the basic structure down we moved onto the next song.

Our next song, Frosty Nights (When I Was Your Age), is a-cappella, with just two parts, one for each of us. Ruth wrote it for her son, and we've been singing it around the house so much that before we set off for the studio, Ruth's son was singing snippets of it himself! We hadn't originally intended to put this on the mini-album as Ruth composed it in mid-January this year, after we'd already planned a rough track listing, however, it fitted so well with the theme that we couldn't leave it off. You might have to look that bit harder for it as a result. We'll be giving away the sheet music free with our album so you can have a bash at singing it yourselves.


Last up was Marc's composition, the title track of the album, Amateur Astronomy. Over a year in the writing, the song has three distinct sections coming together to tell a simple story. Its lengthy gestation means it's ended up nothing like the song he started out with, but it's all the better for that. Utilising the tenor ukulele Ruth bought Marc for Christmas, in addition to piano, some soaring strings and backing vocals from Ruth, Marc handles lead vocal duties on this one.

After recording all three songs, that was it for the day; we've arranged to go back to mix everything on Saturday 14th February (yes, Valentine's Day; is there anything more romantic than spending time together in the studio?)

As usual, Andy was fantastic; he doesn't shy away from telling us, diplomatically, if we could go back in the booth and record something again better; he also makes an excellent brew.

Whilst we were in the studio, we finalised the track-listing for the mini-album. It has a loose concept running through it, so we had to think carefully about where everything goes. We've already designed the front cover of the CD; once everything is mixed, we have to sort out CDs, a launch, reviews, radio play, and the back cover of the CD, too. A friend of Ruth's is also recording us performing folk staple Reynardine as b-side for our first single from the album, which will be our folk-inspired song Ella Brown (you can watch us playing it live here).

We're very excited about having finished recording, but in some ways, that's only the beginning. Watch this space!

Catalyst Studios, Saturday 25th October (by Ruth)

When Marc and I got married, quite a few of our friends bought or made us some amazing gifts. In amongst those gifts were some vouchers for a local recording studio, Catalyst Studios in St. Helens.

On the last Saturday in October we boarded a taxi with all our instruments and made our way down to the studio. I was slightly nervous; Marc and I had been in a studio together (not Catalyst) just once before and the sound engineer there had presumably been so cautious not to offend that he didn’t give us any idea how our song sounded, or offer any advice. Marc’s been in many bands and many studios before, but this was only my second time, and I was hoping that this time we’d be given just a little more direction (whilst not bossed around or told what to do and what not to do).

I need not have worried! Andrew, who runs things there, was marvellous (especially as he had to tread a fine line between explaining things very clearly to me whilst simultaneously not appearing patronising to Marc)! He was really helpful at giving us guidance on what sounded okay and what might need another attempt, but was also absolutely fine if we wanted to change something a little.

We took a break in the middle of the day for a picnic (I’d made butties and a cake).



My son joined us half way through the day after spending the morning with his dad. It’s fair to say he was a little bored but we’d brought along reading material, pens and pencils, paper, and even a DS which he played until his eyes got tired. He couldn’t understand why we kept going and singing very similar things over and over again so I had to explain the concept of harmonies! Still, he got to sit at the mixing desk.



We’d originally hoped to go in for a day and come out with a ludicrous number of songs. In the end, we came out with two with which we were really happy, with lots of harmonies and various parts. Compared to our last visit to a studio, where we came out with a song in a matter of two hours, but much as it’s lovely, it sounds more like a live take, we were very pleased with the results at the end of our session.

What would we do differently? Well, next time we go (and that’s a reminder to me… I need to sort this out!) we won’t sandwich it into a busy weekend of gigs. We did practise our parts of course, but they could have been even tighter. Also, I wrote harmonies for one of the songs literally the night before, and gave myself one or two notes that were too high for me to sing, due to me writing them at half eleven at night, knackered, and thinking “C#6? NO problem!” Of course, though I’m okay with A5 provided I’ve had a couple of cups of tea and it’s not first thing in the morning, and can even just about manage C6 at a push, with a clear wind in the right direction, that extra semitone? Nooo. Between that, and (me, not Marc, he’s blameless!) deciding to change a glockenspiel part at the last minute, I do think there was a bit of time that we wasted which with hindsight, could have been saved.

Andrew was also a great help with the violin part. I’m a very average violinist (grade 5; can’t get more average than that) but with a very good violin (hired from Mike Phoenix and kindly sorted out by boss band The Loungs with a little help from The Heart of Glass - long story, and more about that in later posts) and some studio magic, I think the string part actually sounds great!

One of the two songs we recorded was an original Christmas carol, and you can listen to it and download from Bandcamp. The other will be included as part of a future release.

We would absolutely recommend Catalyst Studios to any musicians who want a professional recording of their music. We’ll be going back there anyway!

Victoria Park, St. Helens, Sunday 26th October (Storytelling Festival)

What a wonderful gig - or more accurately, two gigs, or at least, two sets - this was!




Our first set in the afternoon saw us in the beautifully decorated Gate Lodge, playing a set of narrative folk songs with a little bit of a talk about the tales they told. It was a lovely set up with people wandering in and out of the area in which we were playing, and going in and out of another room to decorate glass lanterns for a later parade. Lots of children and young people were listening, which we thought was lovely.




Our second set (you can just make out Ruth’s son in this photo, dressed as Robin Hood, sat inside the bandstand where he told all  his mates he got the best view) was providing background music for the amazing Bring the Fire Project! They truly were amazing; they improvised several fire-juggling sequences as we played, finishing our set with our folky twist on 90s classic Ebeneezer Goode. One commenter said “I used to rave to this in my youth, but I preferred this version”, which we felt was a fab compliment!

Thanks to Vikki, Steve, Diane and everyone else for all the work that went into this amazing festival.

Photographs from our Big Busk gig

St. Helens photographer Robbob took some pictures of us at the Big Busk in St. Helens’ Victoria Park two weekends ago; we’ve finally been able to contact him for permission to use them; he said yes! Hurray, because we love these pictures. In the first it looks like Ruth’s son is either terribly proud of his Mum and step-Dad, or is saying “lord, what fools these mortals be”.

And that's a wrap: Ruth writes about the Big Busk in St. Helens' Victoria Park

We’ve done lots of gigs in Liverpool in our time, in some gorgeous venues, but not much in the town in which we reside, St. Helens (for no reason except that they just haven’t come up in the same way). This summer we’ve managed to do two, in quick succession; the first in Rainhill and this, the second, and the last of our summer gigs (we’re taking August off gigging to organise our September wedding) even closer to home, in the newly refurbished bandstand in St. Helens’ Victoria Park.

We arrived just as the afternoon was starting. There were two stages; the other was more of a rock/indie orientated stage, and as the action on both stages took place simultaneously, we took the decision to stick around the bandstand for the more folky/acoustic side of things.

The lady compèring the bandstand’s events was called Diane and she introduced each act with a mix of humour, professionalism and good cheer.

We caught a little bit of dance troupe Paparazzi; my son’s more knowledgeable about that sort of thing than I and he seemed to enjoy it, but then we went off to the Lodge to drop off our instruments. When we got back a chap in an Iron Maiden T-shirt (I did ask him his name but to my shame I have forgotten, and he isn’t one of the people on the bill, so if anyone knows who he is please do let me know, as he was great and I’d like to hear more) was playing some folky, melodic stuff which we enjoyed. We also caught some of Cesar Bodey, who carried on like a trouper despite some technical issues (which sound man Steve did his best to remedy) and a sore arm!

Then we heard Shaun Brussels’ set. This young man is already practically a guitar virtuoso… and he’s just fourteen! If there’s any fairness in the music industry you’ll be hearing this young man’s name quite a bit in future.

Then it was us! This was the first gig this summer for which we’d decided to go piano-less. We do open mics sans piano, of course, as lugging around a keyboard on the ‘bus is a pretty hefty task if you’re only going to be playing two or three songs, but this was a full set. As such, we took the decision not to play our piano ballad Sally, to change Millbrook to ukulele and glockenspiel, and not to add in any of our “oldie” type piano covers.

We started with Bad Sitcom, then played our cover of 80s kids’ TV cartoon Mysterious Cities of Gold (and segued it into Gaudete). We followed with three folk songs in our own arrangements back to back; Scarborough Fair, The Stonecutter’s Boy and Let No Man Steal Your Thyme. After that, we played the first of two 90s dance songs in a folky style; Set You Free. There followed two originals; Millbrook and Shepherd’s Delight (It’s Not Time To Go To Bed).

Finally, for the first time live, we played the second folky-cover-of-a-90s-dance-tune of the day, our take on Ebeneezer Goode, on mandolin and ukulele with me singing the rap rubato, and Marc joining me on vocal harmonies for the chorus. We can honestly say without boasting that it seemed to go down an absolute treat. And then that was that, it was a wrap from us. Diane had some nice words for us about our forthcoming wedding and we left the stage.

It was interesting that about half way through our set, the crowd suddenly doubled in size. Much as I’d like to tell you it was all our fans coming to see us, it seemed what had happened was that over on the rock stage there was a big break while a band with a huge set up got ready, and so people drifted over towards the bandstand. However, the majority of them seemed to stay, so we must have been tuneful enough to keep at least part of a more rock-oriented crowd, which is quite pleasing.

After us was our friend Will Barnes who played a fantastic set. I’ve seen many of Will’s gigs over the past couple of years; Will’s always been a talented musician but more recently his intra-set banter has become an integral part of his set too. Also he opened one of his songs with the first lines of one of our songs, and another of his songs with a bit of REM. Basically, Will was great, and he’s always gigging around St. Helens and Liverpool, and you should make an effort to go and see him.

Then came Billy & John, acoustic folk duo, with a set consisting mainly of originals … and the second mandolin of the day! Fantastic stuff. Following them was Paul Atherton, who’d brought an exuberant crowd with him. Who knew Amy McDonald’s Mr Rock and Roll could still work in such an anthemic style?

The day wound down with a very syncronised dance troupe, Connect (my son, who likes that sort of thing, was mesmerised), and then a set from Diane’s partner (who’s name I’ve forgotten - sorry ) who included a cover of Leadbelly’s Where Did You Sleep Last Night in his set. There was a little boy dancing on the bandstand throughout his set - I don’t think it was staged - pure spontaneity like that can’t be!

As we were packing up, performance poets The MadLads (formerly The Amigos) got up for an impromptu set which seemed to go down well with what was left of the crowd. They used to attend a poetry night I and a friend of mine put on in St. Helens a couple of years ago. I’d like to see them take a leaf out of the book of some other comedy poets now, and really perform their rhymes. Stuart Kenyon in particular has some wistful, intelligent verse and it’s great to see his delivery catching up with that.

All in all it was a fantastic day. Once again we got to meet up with some people who we’d only known previously on twitter, including Mike Ashworth and Lynn Gerrard. We also saw Andy Bowden, one time mayor of St. Helens, watching our set; later he said on twitter that it was (Ebeneezer) Good(e). A chap from the paper came to take our picture, so you never know, we could be in there this Thursday, although I imagine he took pretty much everyone’s picture so who knows.

Whatever happens though, it was a great gig; we loved all the music and performances going on at the bandstand. In some ways it’s a shame we couldn’t get to the other stage to have a listen but you can’t be in two places at once, and where we were had such a lot to offer.

Huge thanks to all the organisers, especially Vikki who had put a herculean amount of effort into ensuring this was such a fantastic event despite adverse weather (there was a storm the night before the Big Busk, and the morning saw heavy, pelting rain) and being poorly herself. I really hope she manages to get some rest now; there’s no one deserves it more right now!

Anyway, officially at any rate, that was our last gig of the summer; we hope you enjoyed it! We’ll probably do an open mic or two between now and September but aside from that we’re concentrating on organising our biggest gig ever; our wedding! Watch out for us in autumn though…



[Our “what have we learned from this gig?” feature will have a post all of its own! Keep an eye out on the blog…]

ManorFest Party on the Farm, Sunday 6th July

Being on twitter is great, especially when you live in St. Helens. There’s a real sense of local community on twitter, especially with the #sthelens and #sthelenshour hashtags. Add one of those tags and the wonderful folk at @sthelenshour and @sthelensculture will retweet your event, organisation, shop or whatever it is, to thousands of local residents.

One of the biggest supporters of St. Helens, both the town and the hashtag, is a chap called Mike. He writes a blog about the town which is largely positive but not afraid to be critical when called for. And it’s thanks to him that we found out about a two day event to be held at Manor Farm (a gorgeous pub on the stoops side of Rainhill) in aid of Willowbrook Hospice. And it was Mike who retweeted that a lady called Helen was still looking for musicians, and suggested we might want to look into it.

Which, of course, we did.

The day arrived, well, the second day (as it was a two-day event, but due to prior commitments we couldn’t make the Saturday), and after realising there was no way we could get there on the 10a ‘bus with all our instruments, we called a taxi, plonked our gear in the boot, put the child in the back seat with his football, and were on our way.

It hadn’t quite hit home that we were actually opening the day’s events with our set until we got there, set the little one kicking his ball about in the field in front of the massive stage-on-a-truck, where he was soon joined by other children for an impromptu kickabout. But, there we were, all set up thanks to the fantastic sound team led by Bayley and Liam, and ready to go.

We played for 40 minutes, mainly originals with a few covers thrown in. It was great fun, and we gave what we certainly thought was a good performance.



We also had chance to speak to a few people we knew from twitter, but not “in real life”; DJ Dex Nelson, who played some fantastic music in between all the sets (proper vinyl too), Fruitbatwalton (we learned his real name but we don’t know if it’s common knowledge, anyway, you probably think of him as Ralph even though that’s the name of his dog) and Vikki and her other half, Steve. Vikki is organising the Big Busk in Victoria Park, St. Helens, at which we’ll be performing on Saturday 19th July.

Then, the child, having been running around with a football in the heat for about an hour, came down with what seemed like a mild form of heat exhaustion, so we had to get him inside and administer fluids, and so it was we missed some of the music, but obviously, the kid comes first. Thankfully though, after about half an hour he was okay again, although we had to tell him no more football for a bit, about which he wasn’t best pleased. Still, we all sat under a tree and listened to the musicians, eating burgers from the fab barbecue.

There had been a running order posted on Facebook, but as often happens, it seemed like a few positions had changed, and as it was we weren’t entirely sure what band/musician names were (though Polker Dice very cleverly brought along a banner to tape to the stage; great idea). We especially liked Bayley’s band, Three Piece Suit, for their fun covers of well-known songs (especially Another Brick in the Wall) and their on-stage camaraderie. It’s always great to watch a band who are clearly enjoying themselves. Evil Picolo was good (one of those musicians you see around the townie all the time but realise you’ve never actually heard play) and there were some great singers too; a young woman called Amber who had a belter of a voice and another girl whose name we didn’t catch (might have been called Eleanor?) but she was young, and sang some originals with her guitar with great verve and confidence.

The child got another chance to meet the excellent Reef’s Reptiles, a husband and wife team who bring their menagerie of unusual pets to events (and can be booked for parties). He especially loved the snake!




In the end, we had to leave a little earlier than we had planned, because the child was getting sleepy, but we thoroughly enjoyed the event.

We always say that you never do a gig where you don’t learn something or come away having to decided to change something. Well, this time it was our realisation that the sets of the other bands were very cover-heavy, and that it wouldn’t hurt us to have a few more covers in hand too for similar events. When an audience has come specifically to see you, playing lots of originals makes perfect sense. But when they’ve come to an event at which you just happen to be playing, it is probably polite to play the audience a few more songs they might know, whether that’s covers, or possibly some traditional folk songs. Obviously there’s a balance to strike; we want to be known for our own stuff, not just as “that duo that does the folky rave covers,” but at the same time, expecting a new audience to engage with your original material right from the off is perhaps a tad (unintentionally) arrogant?

(We’ve also learned that you shouldn’t let your child play football non-stop in the afternoon sun for the best part an hour without a cooling break.)

Anyway, thanks to all involved in the organisation and promotion of ManorFest Party on the Farm; we hope it raised lots of money for Willowbrook, and we’d love to come back if you do anything similar again!


For those who want to hear us live again, we will be playing two or three songs tonight (10th July) at the Brink’s open mic night in Liverpool; get there about sevenish. Next up, this Saturday (12th July) we are playing the View Two Gallery as part of the Liverpool Acoustic Afternoon; get there for one o’clock in the afternoon. Finally we’re playing the Big Busk in Victoria Park, City Road, St. Helens on Saturday 19th July. We’re playing at three but there’s an entire afternoon of music so why not take friends/family and make a day of it?

Beyond that… well, we have a wedding to organise (our own) so are trying not to book too many gigs in August, but you never know… so watch this space! X