A Baker’s Dozen, a New Face and a Gaggle of Gremlins

I’m not superstitious, touch wood, but thirteen performers…  What could possibly go wrong!

Well, only a crackly cable, finicky feedback, buggered batteries and a wayward Snark, that’s what!

The crackly cable decided to strike just as Joe Lyon was performing Joe Brown’s “Picture of You”.

It went all quiet and then decided to crackle back to life after we turned up the volume. Oh I do like a dose of deafening feedback, don’t you! Grrr! A quick cable swap fixed things for Joe’s next song “The Next Time”.

Later on in the evening Mike Whittaker’s guitar battery became belligerent, just as he was singing the words “How can I find another…” He didn’t have to find another (battery, that is) because our excellent instrument microphone came to the rescue as he finished his set of fine original songs.

Like a true pro, Mike was completely unfazed by the incident, and the general consensus afterwards was that most of the time, acoustic guitars sound so much better when they are not plugged in anyway.  I have to agree.

The next bothersome battery belonged to young James McGregor who was making his first appearance at the club. It started cutting in and out as it escaped from the on-board electronics compartment.

Fellow Wrexhamite Peter Leslie quickly facilitated the loan of his own guitar and James was able to wow us all with a superb set of songs: “Bird of the Season”, “Black Sheets of Rain” and “A Fool for You”.

James has been making a name for himself lately as an up-and-coming singer/songwriter on the local music scene and recently featured in Wrexham’s Focus Wales three day music festival. Hopefully we’ll be seeing him back at Ruthin AllStyles again in the near future.

Snarks can be sneaky little sods. These handy little clip-on guitar tuners have a habit of going walk-about. I lost mine – a red one – about three weeks ago.

Anyway, clearing up tonight, we found a blue one on the floor. Now here’s the dilemma… do I announce it as lost property or buy a pot of red paint! 😉

Funny Business
It seems the gremlins were done with their funny business by the half time beer break, so we felt confident putting on our favourite Scottish soothsayer Harry Miller to get us giggling with his comic yarns and anecdotes.

Peter Leslie’s set began with one of his own songs “Whatever the Fight” followed by The Kinks’ “Summertime”.  For his last song he did “You Won’t Remember Me” by Kieran Halpin, which was the song the man himself had chosen for the finale of last week’s showcase.

Lynda gave us Don Williams’ “Don’t You Believe”, Tom took us down “The Road to Dent”,  Colin Campbell told us about “The Living Years” and birthday girl Cath Bryan reminded us that, whatever our age, “We Are Young”.

Tom took up his dobro, and John Rowell, the six-string bass, to accompany  Richard on “Tulsa Time” and “Sylvia’s Mother”. Then John swapped the bass for his acoustic guitar to sing “Time the Magician” and “Happy Together” duetting with Mick Watson.

Finale
This week’s finale spot fell to our second birthday girl, Wendy Eastwood and her fella, Richard. Between them, they gave us two fine and varied sets that included a special request from Colin 🙂 for Richard to sing the Jim Reeves classic “Roses are Red”, and Willy Nelson’s “Crazy” sung by Wendy in her best Patsy Cline voice.

They finished the evening with the lovely Georgette Jones song, “Strong Enough to Cry”.

Gremlins aside, it was another fab evening’s entertainment.