Remember remember the 8th of November onwards...

Well folks, never one to sit on my laurels, its about time I updated the blog again.. giving you a clue of what we've been up to.



Friday 8th November
We received a call from Viva Music, who very kindly offered us a last minute gig at The Longton and Meir British Legion club.. Not being our usual kind of venue, we thought, "why not?".. and duly set off. We were received with slight caution, as another band had been booked, but sadly couldn't make it, and we were the replacement. Of course, they were cautious, they had never had an acoustic night before.. Turns out we'd been asked to sort out an acoustic night.. So we waited for other folk to turn up.. and ended up doing our usual round of covers for the assembled crowd. What was quiet caution soon turned into warm applause.. With people asking if we knew various songs.. which was usually met with us saying, "we don't know that, but we do know this!"... Anyway, we did our bit and chatted to the assembled crowd after, who were very appreciative and grateful for a great evening of entertainment. Hopefully we'll get booked to play there again soon.

Saturday 9th November 
We'd been booked for a few months to play at The White Lion in Penkhull, so were pleased when our chance to play came around. Its a fairly local venue for us to play, and we've seen a few people play there, so knew it would be good. Anyway we did our thing and received applause, and had a generally lovely evening, people came, people went.. as is the way with many pubs, rarely keeping a steady audience..anyway, its a great venue to play and after the locals all gave their positive support and looks like we'll be going back again..

Friday 15th November
Viva Music once again pulled out the stops and provided us with a gig at short notice, which is brilliant really and always welcome, espescially if we're not booked to play somewhere. Anyhoo, we were so chuffed, as we'd never played Sandbach before.. the evening was made more special by the turning up of our good friend Thomas Schultz, the amazing double bass player, who had a rare evening off and decided to join us, adding an extra dimension to our set! Immediately we were noticeably different, giving a fuller sound and a more "band like" output, made the gig something else really. One of the locals adopted us and spent the evening chewing my ear about The Stone Roses, music in general and spending Christmas alone.. which was rather sad, some people really go through it at this time of year and it was a timely reminder of how lucky some of us are that we have family and friends who we can depend upon to be around. Anyway, we had a new fan, which was lovely and made sure we acknowledged Martin when we wound up the set.

As always we have been busy learning new songs, adding in some absolute corkers into the set, which are an absolute joy to learn. OK, they're covers, but covers have their place and played well and interpreted in our way, makes them special, to us, at least.
I've had an hiatus from writing.. writers block, I suppose, but that seems to have let up and have managed to get another one written.. Graeme now has a backlog of around 15 songs to work through and make "our own"... its been such a challenge writing, but also great fun and somehow liberating.

We had to cancel a gig on Tuesday 19th, due to my not being well.. even I succumb to illness from time to time, I'd much rather cancel a gig than sing it badly because I'm not well..Nothing worse for me than a chest infection/cold/manflu for really taking the wind out of my proverbial sails.. however I'll bounce back.. I always do and you'll be seeing Rain out and about again soon.