What a surprise to wake up and hear ourselves singing ‘The Lockdown Blues‘ on Radio 4 this week on the Today programme! It was used as part of a piece launching a nation-wide project called ‘A Song for Us‘ set up by Sound UK to archive music composed and recorded during Lockdown. An online music map has been designed for creators to upload their videos/audio. We were just getting over the shock of this when we were informed that some footage might also go out on Sky News as part of a special programme marking the the anniversary of Lockdown in the UK. It did! Here’s a couple of screenshots we managed to capture. Great they chose a section with some of our invited guest singers! All quite surreal but nice all the same!

Absolutely delighted, if a little shocked that all our recordings are to be catalogued, archived and preserved as part of the nations audio and cultural heritage! Thank you to James Tugwell for finding us and inviting us to donate our music. It’s lovely to know that our songs and tunes will be available for generations to come.

How terrific to hear ‘Goodbye Mr Piper Man’ over the airwaves this week! It was one of the tracks we included in our specially composed ‘Pied Piper’ score for a performance which was first staged back in 2012. The full length track was played during a special feature on the brand new Puppet Museum soon to open at Up Front Arts Venue in Cumbria. John Parkinson talked at length about the extensive collection of puppets he and Elaine have collected over the years from around the world! Another exciting venture for the award winning venue.
You can listen to the whole interview from 1 hour 10 minutes here.

Obviously we’re disappointed that all our Spring and Summer gigs have been postponed or cancelled, as all musicians are but on a more positive note, we’ve written a brand new blues song all about living in lockdown and better still, we’ve made a video to go with it! (Well we have had a bit more time on our hands!)

‘The Lockdown Blues’ will be premiered on Friday 22nd May at 6pm GMT on our Youtube channel. Why not take a look and see what we’ve been up to and more importantly, who else we roped in!

We’ve just returned from our mini tour down South and can’t believe how lucky we’ve been with the weather! Warm dry conditions always makes for a better tour (especially with a dog!) Big thanks to Reeth Memorial Hall (North York), Wells Maltings,(Norfolk) The Six Bells (Suffolk) and Hitchin Folk Club (Herts) for having us back. It was great to share songs from the new album alongside other bits and bobs with such appreciative audiences everywhere. We have a few gigs over the Summer so check the LIVE page to see where we’ll be.

Well our run of rural touring with Highlight’s North has just come to an end. Nine venues and hundreds of miles later, we can now empty the van and enjoy a relaxing weekend off! Each hall across Northumberland, Cumbria and County Durham had it’s own special quality and no two shows were quite the same! We met some wonderful people and were thoroughly spoilt by many of the promoters with their delicious home cooked fare. A big thank you to everyone who came along to see us play live, bought a CD or two and of course to the Highlights Team for organising the programme. We loved it!

A review of ‘Stand Together’ has been published in the latest issue (126) of the Living Tradition magazine. You can read the review online at http://www.livingtradition.co.uk/webrevs/lama009.htm

Six years ago we composed a score to accompany a brand new production of The Pied Piper of Hamelin, a puppet show based on the new version by Michael Morpurgo. Up-Front Arts Centre created the puppets, many many rats and the beautiful scenery then staged the show during the Summer of 2012 – it was a huge success! This Summer they are staging it once again at their fantastic award winning Theatre near Penrith, Cumbria. It runs until the end of the school holidays and is well worth a visit!

Just heard that ‘Stand Together‘ is ‘Album of the Month‘ in the August edition of Crack Magazine!

“Their latest album features eight fabulous original songs and a couple of beautiful covers: The Water of Tyne (given a lightly jazzy arrangement) and the Sinatra classic In The Wee Small Hours. The duo dovetail together expertly with an appealing mix of folk, blues, jazz, country and pop with a sound that is rootsy Northumbrian and running the full gamut from breezy to haunting. Bravo! ”

….they get loads of submissions too. Well chuffed!

Big thanks to Genevieve Tudor for airing two tracks (Stand Together and Benjamin Mee) on her Folk Show last night on BBC Radio Shropshire. The show was titled ‘CD’s you need to hear’ so that was doubly nice! You can listen again for a month here.