The Three Hundred Year Old Band

Much like the beloved family Christmas tree, we in Picturehouse are dragged out from the back of the garage, looking slightly more tattered than last year, but dressed festively up, and with even a few new baubles to brighten things a bit, and dispatched to The Pickerel for our last show of 2025, shortly to be followed  - in two weeks’ time - by our first show of 2026. Look, I don’t look after the diary. We start by comparing Christmasses, ailments and waistlines, and generally agree that we’ve done the best we can under the circumstances. A Picturehouse game of Guess Who would be a remarkably untainted pursuit - “Does your band member wear glasses?” “Yes” [click, click, click, click]. Tempus Fugit*, after all.

The baubles thing is quite a nice way of putting it in that although the band itself is an ongoing concern - and few branches of the tree have been removed, repaired and then replaced along the way - the decorations continue to evolve. I recently found a cassette (a format first introduced in 1963) I’d compiled of suggestions for the set list at an early stage (we still haven’t got round to any of them), however these days someone will be listening to 6Music, or Tidal, or their lovingly-curated** Spotify playlist and be struck by inspiration before WhatsApping (first introduced in 2009) the group chat with a YouTube link and posting the chin in hand emoji.*** This has happened with increasing frequency as we approach the gig, to the point where we have four ‘new’ songs to fit into our evening’s salon, and that’s if you don’t include the festive encore. Depending on your definition of ‘festive’ I think Del Amitri’s ‘Nothing Ever Happens’ fits the mood of the Christmas perineum perfectly and besides, two of us got Justin Currie’s book as presents. 

One of these new songs we intend to embark upon for the first time we only ran through a couple of times at the last rehearsal because The Drummer had spent all week practising the tricky drum fill in the breakdown and we didn’t have the heart to put all his hard work to waste. Nevertheless he still had to remind himself of it via his phone before we went on. On the other side of the stage The Keyboard Player was rueing that the sample he’d downloaded of The Killers’ intro wasn’t loud enough to project over the PA. In the meantime, I was wondering whether a Les Paul (first introduced in 1952) at ten pounds**** wasn’t something I should reconsider as a tool in the workplace, what with my back and everything. As The Drummer pointed out, at least The Keyboard Player has one of those new-fangled standing work stations that are so popular in offices these days.

So preoccupied with the new material was I that the older stuff seemed to have seeped out of my brain. Faced with an upcoming solo in one of the three songs we play that was performed at Live Aid, I realised with horror that I had no idea where to start and so the muscle memory that usually carries me through these things was going to have to give way to the angel of What Key Is It In, which is basically St. Jude for guitarists. I think I got away with it, and was extraordinarily surprised to hear myself being complimented on it by The Singer as he introduced the next number. I think we all had the yips to a degree - one particular smooth verbal introduction on my part was completely derailed by the apparent sound of a shed being constructed toward the back of the stage and the ghost of ‘Smile’s past was very much present in the room. Buoyed by a full house however, we soldiered on unbowed, entertained not only by the spontaneous singalongs but by the theatrical back and forth of a group of youngsters who clearly had a pub crawl agenda, but who kept being drawn back as if by magnetism as we started another song which one or more of them beamed in recognition at and pleaded with the party to be able to stay for just one more. I expect they knew them from their parents’ CD collections (first released in 1982).

We tried the new one with the big fill as the first encore and were delighted to have a pub full of people singing back the ‘La, la la la la, la la la la, lalalalalalalala’ hook with which Jim Kerr secured himself a very generous writing credit on the theme song to ‘The Breakfast Club’ (released 1985), the drum part performed in an exemplary fashion - one afternoon’s work for Mel Gaynor, a lifetime of aspiration for The Drummer. In the cool night air we performed the usual gig post-hoc analysis - missed cues, false intros, the set list being printed in too small a font to be read from a standing position, and the overwhelming sense that a room full of people had sung, danced, thrown off their cares and given themselves up to the groove. For all of our gripes about tuning, amp buzz, a lumpy set and the correct pacing of the second set, the Martians could land in the car park, and no-one would care.

* There is no truth in the rumour that The Drummer thought that that was the spell Harry Potter used when he couldn’t locate a metronome in music lessons.

**Algorithm generated.

***Yes, we still use those.

****About four and a half kilos under the decimal system (introduced in 1795).

*****We tend to subscribe to the ‘If that’s what you think it sounds like then that’s what it sounds like’ approach. Some of us can’t listen to the original version of ‘Band on the Run’ for example as we’ve being playing it so long that we have very much made it our own. Same with ‘My Sharona’. Nevertheless, some bits are absolutely hooks which need to be performed as per the record, such as the guitar solo in ‘Just What I Needed’ by The Cars.

The dog ate my amplifier

 

Firstly, from the socials; It can be nerve-wracking showing up to a pub on a Friday night wondering if anyone’s going to come, if they’ll like any of your songs, if you can work out how the house PA works and if that amplifier the dog kicked over will ever make a sound again. So you can imagine how gratifying it was when they did, they did, we did and it did.

Behind all this, of course, lies a tale. And, indeed, a tail.

We in Helen and The Neighbourhood Dogs have been engaged by a third party to perform our blend of folk, country, blues, pop and hair metal - a genre we have self-styled ‘East Angliacana’ - at The Duke (formerly the The Duke of York, previous to that The Grand Old Duke of York and satisfyingly half way up and half way down the hill on which it is situated). Three fifths of Picturehouse, the equally self-styled three hundred year-old band are also Dogs, and we are used to pitching up on a Friday night and performing loud yet reverent versions of popular hits of the nineties to people determined to drink away what would have been referred to in the self-same decade as a wage packet in one sitting, and so the prospect of performing ballads about (say) the second-oldest lighthouse in New Zealand or a country heartbreak song based around a popular spa town in the north of England is clearly giving Mr. Wendell, for one, the heebie jeebies. As if the poor vegetarian, left-handed, colour blind soul didn’t have enough to worry about.

I am on my third trip to the car park - as has been noted, I am laden with more gear for the nice little acoustic band than I take out for the big, loud covers band - I decide to hold the door open for Stephen, who is wheeling a large keyboard up the load-in ramp and Gib, similarly bass-laden, while I balance an amplifier at an angle against one leg, have a foot in the door with the other and try to keep the guitar slung over my shoulder from slipping off and breaking the plate glass, which is when the larger of the the adorable, if hefty, pub dogs decides to investigate what’s going on in the garden. I probably should have made the extra trip, as at least then I’d have been carrying the amp, and it wouldn’t have toppled over on to the patio slabs.

Still, once we are in and introduced to the charming bar staff (who make a point of welcoming us with a complimentary first round) we go about the business of setting up. We still haven’t played long or often enough to have the routine down and so there is quite a bit of jockeying for position, not least with Tony, who requires a bar stool for the evening, what with his new hip still playing him up.* Furthermore, although we are gratified that there is a house PA, our de facto sound engineer is also the chef, and he’s currently busy producing a number of extraordinarily delicious pizzas from the kitchen. I am advised of the limitations of the radio mics and regard the iPad screen doubtfully. This is not the steam-driven knobs and sliders technology I am familiar with. Nevertheless I go into Maverick mode and start ordering people about in a gruff and perfunctory fashion. “You - give me a lead from that, I need a stand here, and you - off your phone, I need you in the room”. Sensing that, as the saying goes, too many cooks may complicate culinary matters, I am left to get on with it although, ironically, in this instance one specific extra cook may have come in handy.

Once everyone else is at least line checked, I arrange my array of weaponry and plug it in. There are two electric guitars - one a Gretsch which I am complimented upon at least twice during the evening for its looks alone, and one an open-tuned Telecaster with which to perform a number of songs in the key of G, which in our set are legion. All songs played on this guitar are in G, although not all the songs in G are played on this guitar. Irrespective of the looks or weird chord inversions involved, neither of these guitars is making any noise. I run through the usual idiot checks - volume up, power on, leads in, effects pedal batteries sufficiently charged, leads changed, toggle switches um, toggled. By this time the floor is littered with so many tangled and discarded leads that in order to check the volume on the vocals I have to trace one by hand from the microphones through the spaghetti-like pile at my feet and up into the wireless power amp. You can denote the channels by assigning a label on the screen, but I didn’t get as far as that in the manual. Is there somewhere we can put the cases?” asks someone. “I put mine back in the car” I respond, a touch tetchily, having also just tripped over a lead and sent Helen’s mic stand flying. “My car’s not here”. “Well put them in Gib’s!” The non-amplifying amplifier is starting to become an issue. And then I remember the dog. 

Now, I don’t know if you’ve ever tried checking the seating of half a dozen Sovtek Blues Junior vacuum tube valves by the light of a phone in the saloon bar of a pub with half an hour to go before the set is due to start, but it’s not as relaxing as it sounds. Thankfully, Gib has remembered to unplug the amp before we go in so there’s a good chance I won’t electrocute myself during the process. Unfortunately neither of us has brought a Philips head screwdriver, so there's quite an element of digital contortion involved. Nevertheless, after no little wrangling, we plug in, turn on, and the comforting hum of a functioning Fender amplifier fills the silence. “I” I announce “…am going outside, I’m going to finish this pint, and then I think we should soundcheck”.

Gratifyingly, even the soundcheck gets a round of applause. We start on time. First night nerves mean that all of our best and most carefully rehearsed stage banter is employed, from the banjo jokes***, ‘the first rule of songwriting’, the explanation of the assisted passage policy of the nineteenth century New Zealand government (see above) and the [Trad. Arr] introduction of our intermission.**** Thankfully, it turns out that the audience are well up for a bit of East Angliacana, and although my rather tart rejoinder that the cases can go back in the car was relevant at the time, it is when I need a capo mid set that I remember that where I keep mine is now safely locked away, and in the car park. Fortunately both Mr. Wendell and Mr. Tony have remembered theirs and not all three of us will be using one at the same time and so, much like the loaves and fishes, there are enough to go round. It’s a miracle. That I didn’t break a string is similarly fortunate as my spares are with my capo. Mr. Wendell is not as fortunate. I didn’t hear the ping, but I experienced the fall out. “Carry on without me” he says, heroically. “I’ll only hold you back”.

By song’s end, he is back in the game, although apparently considerably more flustered than beforehand. Even as Helen is emoting the final, breath-defying coda I can hear the octave-spanning tightening of an errant D string. Or G? Both? From the gloom at the back of the stage, our unfortunate string-snapping friend, who not only has had to get rid of both ends of a torn and frayed length of steel core and phosphor bronze, find a replacement, retune it, and who shares a condition with one in twelve of the male population, hisses “They’re fucking colour-coded!”

And to to return to the socials: Well, a big hello, thank you and massive tip of the hat to our new best friends at The Duke Ipswich who took a punt on putting on a six piece band mostly playing songs they’d made up out of their own heads on a Friday night, provided a PA, a welcome drink and had two dogs roaming the floor in case punters’ attention wavered at any time. When we did get to the cover version it was equally as gratifying to experience the hush that fell over the pub as Helen started her acapella intro. Even the bloke who left early put some money on our tab. Thank you to Dave Markwell for capturing most of most of us in one photo, and to everyone who came, stomped, clapped and encouraged us all the way through to our third encore. We could do it without you, I suppose, but then what would be the point of that? 💕

* This does, however, provide for a wonderfully declamatory version of his “What’s the Moonlight For?”** wherein he is able to essentially perform the song as (ironically) a stand up routine.

** If not for love?

*** The term ‘joke’ is included here for illustrative purposes only.

**** “We’re going to take a five minute break for ten minutes or so - we’ll see you in quarter of an hour”. Thank you Shev for that one.

The Maverick Diaries

The fourth and final part of my critically acclaimed trilogy of reminiscences should be with us shortly. In the mean time, over in name-drop corner - BJ Cole, Gretchen Peters, Jason Ringenberg, Jon Langford, Mark Olson, Mary Gauthier, Melanie, Neil Innes, Rich Hall and Robyn Hitchcock among many others. I am firmly of the opinion, however, that I do not feature in any of *their* memoirs...

The One with The Wasp Sting.

 Come with me, gentle reader, to my combination of annual retox, spiritual retreat and festival of all things Americana; The Maverick Festival, held annually in the heart of swinging downtown Easton. Once again I am entrusted with stewardship of The Travelling Medicine Show - unadvertised yet programmed (that is to say I mostly know who’s turning up, but no-one else does) with enough of the Glastonbury secret glade vibe about it to make it a favourite of both the artists who don’t fancy the croissants in the Green Room and people who just need a bit of a sit in the shade. Sometimes these people are the same humans.

The stage itself is small, perfectly formed, and of a vintage rustique nature which makes it simultaneously manageable to wrangle if you’re a crewless pirate of the sound waves, or a main stage artiste who just wants to blow off a bit of steam in a leafy enclave without being too concerned about how this set is going to affect your Spotify stats. You’d be surprised how many of us/them there are. One of my early clients are Mick and Stretch, a pair of larrikins who have already moved their tour van so I can set up my tent in the Artist/crew camping field. Stretch temporarily removes his rub board* to bend it into a more comfortable playing position. “I’m just tuning it” he remarks as an aside, before selecting a couple of spoons with which to perform his art. “Might be a bit muffled - this one’s got burn marks on it…”

Just after Stretch has asked for lots of reverb on the melodica, he leans over to scan the vintage** mixing desk. “Everything okay?” I enquire. “Yeah, it’s just that when they say they’re giving you a sound man, you don’t know if it’s a sound man, or just an accountant who fucks about at the weekends”. It’s like being asked for your CV by Tim Minchin (during his imperial ‘Upright’ phase). “I” I respond, with all the faux-dignity and gravitas I can muster “…am actually a Production Planner fucking about at the weekend”. “Are you gunna be here all set?” “No, I’ve got a nice meal booked in Woodbridge, they’ll only hold the table for two hours, so I’m going to set your faders and fuck off into town. Why should I ride your levels?” “Well you’re riding me”. Stretch is one of my favourite human beings on the planet right now, and that - written down - goes nowhere half to explaining how much fun he is. “Why’s this monitor fucked?” loses everything on the page and gains everything in the delivery. I guess you had to be there. All weekend Mick never passed me without a tip of the hat or a “G’day”.

I had a relatively quiet night - The Weeping Willows apparently first played Maverick on The Medicine Show in - what - 2018(?) and were back to complete their full round of MavShow Bingo by doing The Green on Saturday. Later, Joe Martin - a literally jaw dropping songwriter - would be temporarily discomfited by my greeting of “You’re even more handsome than you look in the programme” and quietly grateful at the number of people who had been asking me “Will he be here later?” since he’d played the stage formerly known as The Peacock and mentioned that he might be doing a short set later. Look - I’ve seen a lot - a lot - of songwriters, and not one has convinced me they’d been an actual Daimler-driving habitué of Beverly Hills who is now reduced to begging for chump change until this kid showed up.

Saturday brings new challenges - ten in the morning until ten at night is a long shift in terms of comfort breaks however the Production Manager*** has very thoughtfully relocated from the floor of the Playgroup to the Air BnB not a sticks’ throw from my workstation. Hence I set the stage up and then go and make myself a fried egg sandwich rather than queue behind civilians in order to hand over my half portion poker chip to one of the (universally charming) traders. This also explains why I entered the arena on Sunday morning with a lovely slice of toast and jam rather than a coffee and a hangover. Although, coincidentally, I also had those. Again, everyone was charming and compliant. The Bondurants were as fun as ever, Lewis Pugh delivered a Braggesque polemic of a set, and I’m back at the bar, eating cheese, playing “Who’s your favourite builder” and discussing K-pop (not all of these concurrently) before you know it.

Having woken up at 5:30 on Saturday morning, I’m looking forward to being able to have a leisurely coffee and packing the tent down on Sunday before ambling over to The Barn for our opening set with Helen and The Neighbourhood Dogs. I pop my head out of the tent. The rest of the band are passing up the concrete path between the stables (“Some of these horses bite”) - more worryingly, so is the stage manager. If I were sponsored by Waitrose wet wipes, now would be the time to run playback on the Ad. As always, the crew are attentive, on point, and - as the kids say - all over it. In a good way.

There’s something about a great sound, a good rehearsal and comfortable shoes that usually makes for a great show. The shoes, the rehearsal, the sound and the planets align. It’s a great show. We are missing a Dog. “He’s at the vet’s” I explain. Nevertheless Indigo (bringing down the average age of the band by a factor of about five) plays the part of those extra session players you see tucked away to the side of the stage at arena shows for, say, REM to perfection. New (ish) keyboard player Stephen inhabits in those Benmont Tench spaces we didn’t even know were there, Turny Winn is out of his skin, Gibbon on bass is, well, Gib. Helen is transcendent. Afterwards, I bump into Stretch. “Great show” he says. “See yah down the road”.

*here’s one. https://youtu.be/IbixfEJpjQU?si=Fh-F2lkQFznHhY9W

**Old. Very, very old

***”After eighteen years, I finally get a flushing toilet”

Tonight’s the Night

To Sproughton* where Helen and The Neighbourhood Dogs** have been engaged for the sort of rustic, hay-bailed experience that every band dreams of at least once in their short, typically gadfly existence - the village beer festival. We are to soundtrack the extensive consumption of ale with our self-styled East Angliacana whilst not upsetting the neighbours. To this end there has been installed the dreaded decibel monitor, wired into the power supply and which upon being actioned cuts off all juice to the equipment. Not that this should unduly affect a nice little acoustic band like us, but electric amplifiers lurk toward the back of the stage, and when it trips, Stephen - our new keyboard player - has to reset all the tones on his Roland***. Once the ‘disco lights’ have been pointed out - a traffic light system mounted in the eaves of the tithe barn - it becomes virtually impossible to focus on anything else when hitting that open E chord at the seventh fret, but it turns out that it’s the vocals which really set them, and us - literally - off. Our de facto stage manager and road crew, collectively referred to as Indian George**** set the mixer levels to tickle***** and look suitably unhappy about it.

We begin in a sprightly yet necessarily subdued fashion and it is not long before (encouragingly) people are demanding that we turn it up. We explain that we are (literally) limited in what we can do about it, given that the whole entertainment license of the place is probably down to not disturbing the local residents, who haven’t bought a nice weekend place in the country just so that they can be disturbed by people in the village hall getting progressively pissed and having a good time on their door step. We don’t actually put it in those terms, but the inference is there. Ironically, given the limited decibel level of the PA, no-one can make out the explanation anyway. At this stage even the organisers are shaking their metaphorical fists at the electric killjoy to which we are all beholden. Then, someone has an idea. I won’t tell you exactly how we did it, but there is a visible brightening of everybody’s mood when we are finally audible above the hubbub at the bar. Given that nobody could really hear the first three numbers we simply go back to the top of the set list and start again.

At the incidence of the fourth song, our bass player moves across to the mic. “We’d like to do some new material for you now…we don’t just play those same three songs all night, you know.” There is a cheer from a wholly engaged front row who seem to have decided that we are the perfect dessert for their weekend’s indulgence. Since this is a two-set evening, we have dug into the collective back catalogue and introduced a few things that we might not usually throw in, and Stephen - who is new to this particular game anyway, remember - has a well-organised set of index cards to cue him on keys, chords and presets. Naturally we throw this off by moving one of the songs from the second set to the first, which discombobulates not only one, but two members of the group, who were not privy to this information beforehand. There is a shuffling of cards to my left, and a snapping of capos to my right.

We are in good company, there are cheers, swaying, the occasional whoop, and a generous smattering of applause after each song, which is gratifying given that most people have a pint glass in at least one of their hands. We are to conclude the first set with a little something from the last century which originally had quite a lot of phased electric guitar, some Pete Thomas-style drumming and lasted a not-unreasonable three and a half minutes. We have brought this right into the new millenium with an extra verse, over which Helen plays a psych-folk wyrd flute solo, and necessarily taken out all the drums. There’s also a slight time signature change betwixt the intro, the second verse and the pre-chorus. This song is called The Boy Who Loved Aeroplanes, and we have unaccountably decided to close our (literally) barnstorming first set with it.****** The song reaches its maelstrom climax, dips into the phased harmonics in the outro, and Indigo on the desk rides the faders expertly to create a feedback loop to finish the song, set, and potentially our booking for the evening. I look up from my guitar’s volume control. There is nothing. Not a sound. This is literally the sound of silence. The audience are neither open-mouthed nor dismissive, merely variously drained, empty of conviction or confused. It is one of the greatest moments of my musical life.

And so to the second half, where we have been invited to play (variously) a ceilidh set, something the audience can dance to, or ‘something we know’. Helen explains that there may be elements of all three within our performance but principally that we shall do what we do, and hopefully everyone else will catch up. At one point a couple announce that they are to be married, she is blonde and the next song on the list - serependitiously - is Tony Winn’s ‘The Girl with The Scrambled Yellow Hair’, a smoocher, which they sway to wrapped in each others’ arms. “We do weddings” I submit over the mic. “And funerals?” a wag replies.

We are, however, subject to curfew, and that curfew is twenty minutes away. Unfortunately we only have ten minutes of material left and so muttered suggestions are passed around the (impressively spacious) stage regarding how we’re going to fill the balance. Our bass player comes up with a suggestion so outre that it immediately becomes a rallying point for the collective. We are to play a Waterboys album track that half of the group have probably never heard, let alone any of the audience. “If we get another encore, we’ll do the one you know…” we concede. A fateful promise, and one that we are held to. At least for Fisherman’s Blues there’s just one set of chords which keep going round, (although our former fiddle played disputes this and always insisted that we never played it right in the past) and I don’t have to keep shouting the changes at the long-suffering Stephen mid-middle eight. At ten past curfew we draw things to a close. There are whoops, there is cheering, there are imprecations to continue. 

Our work here is done.

*’Sprortun’

**As Mr. Wendell sagely points out “We wanted a short, catchy name that would look big on posters”

***Pronounced as in Grange Hill.

****There are two of them, George and Indigo. Collectively they are still not as old as the t-shirt I’m wearing at the gig.

*****You know how the phasers in Star Trek have different levels of- ‘stun’, ‘kill’ etc? It’s the same with PA mixing desks.

******Mind you, we’ve got form. At last week’s open air festival we opened with it.

Result. Catch. Hooked

 

Our singer went to Uni with a girl who afterward went on to edit for one of the big publishing houses, hence today's onstage introduction to her semi-autobiographical song 'Where Are They Now?' which ran "If you enjoyed David Nicholls' One Day here's a song about the person who did the punctuation."

“That’s Seventy in Dog Years.”

Once more to Helstock, this year returning to The Institute in Kelvedon, for the annual celebration of The Fragrant and Charming La Mulley’s birthday, a cheeseboard the size of Belgium and, this year, the realisation that we have been performing in various iterations of Helen and The Neighbourhood Dogs for a decade. When Neil Young had been performing for ten years he put out a triple album retrospective* to mark the occasion, whereas we’re going to play the Sproughton Beer Festival. Diff’rent strokes…

We are blessed with the tactical substitution of one Steven Turnbull on keyboards coming into the squad and being named in the first team. I have known him principally as a member of Tony Winn’s band - they even made an album together called Love Songs which is well worth your time seeking out - which is how he is named in my phone as ‘Steven Keys’. He has very much brought an E Street vibe to proceedings and so I have similarly diversified into playing a bit more electric guitar** in order to take on some of the spaces where the fiddle used to be. This is our first public performance with the new line-up, which is also to be augmented by nepo-baby (or, in the circumstances, nepo-puppy) Indigo on third guitar, whose name we are allowed to shorten to ‘Indy’, but I am nevertheless reminded not to shout it at them in the style of John Rhys-Davies in Raiders of the Lost Ark. The mood backstage is sanguine, however I discover that my stage shirt of choice (we need a photo for the Maverick Festival programme so we’re dressed nicely) is missing a button. Gibbon, on bass, without even needing to check the label, which says ‘Slim Fit’ remarks dryly “I wonder how that happened..?” I button my jacket around me, breathe deeply in…and hold it for forty minutes.

The post-show atmosphere is remarkably brighter. “I think we got away with that” posits Mr. Wendell. “Not really a ringing endorsement though, is it?” I reply. La Mulley enters the room with a similar take. I repeat my assertation. “Oh no” she responds “I’ve got better than that - someone who’s never seen us said ‘I knew you dabbled in music, I didn’t realise you were that fucking good at it!’”. I concede that this is a much more positive summary, and wonder if we might use that for the festival blurb?

The evening proceeds in an orderly fashion. Indigo parlays a short set of singer-songwriter drafts of their own. The Arctic Mulleys, with it’s annual performance and ever-revolving line up do a principally Marc Almond-themed selection, one youngster who has clearly been listening to the right things does a Jeff Buckley-esque set which minds me of nothing so much as staying up late to watch the Whistle Test in 1974. Sadly though, as seems to be the way with the young folk these days, once his performance is concluded he and all his friends sidle off into the Spring night. As we know, the correct form is to stay for the first two numbers of the next turn and then quietly excuse oneself under cover of darkness, however that doesn’t seem to be the way to do it these days. Admittedly two of our number have also already gone but in fairness one of them had to get to a Black Metal gig in Colchester right after our show. I think it was ‘Black’, it might have been ‘blackened’ or even ‘toasted’. It was definitely something you can also do with cod, anyway.

Those people did, then, miss an absolute masterclass in composition and performance from one of my favourite singer-songwriters ever, one Paul Mosley (“Aye, spelled like the fascist…”) who really deserves to be much more appreciated than he is. He, similarly, is a veteran of many, many Helstocks, one of which was held in Helen’s sister’s back garden as I recall. Those of us with long memories often spend more time reminiscing than preminiscing. So it is with Wor Pauly, who fondly remembers one sold-out show at The Institute in the company of Jamie Lawson, who you may remember as having a massive, massive hit in Ireland with “I Wan’t Expecting That”*** and being signed to Ed Sheeran’s label. He made it so big that someone was moved to comment under one of his YouTube videos that they’d seen him back in the day in front of four people in Kelvedon. “Okay, it was’t Wembley, but this place was full” remarks Paul. “And that comment was made by…” he shades his eyes and looks around the room until he alights upon the person in question. 

“I don’t normally do trigger warnings, but I am about to play the ukulele” he quips. Back to the piano and a series of torch ballads that at one point genuinely brings me to tears. I am as relieved that it’s dark and that no-one can see my expression as I imagine that other person was earlier. All too soon though, it is over. A groaning tableful of cheese is to be discreetly transported back to The Blue House. I do the idiot check to ensure I’ve retrieved all my leads. Where am I going to? So what happens now? Another guitar case in another village hall.

I cannot stress enough how much you need to listen to Paul Mosley. Start here.

 https://paulmosley.bandcamp.com/album/the-ventriloquist

*pronounced in the record shop argot of the time as ‘decayed’.

**Disappointingly, no-one shouts “Judas!” when I put it on.

***It’s not the original video, but in the same way that someone happened upon that if you start playing Dark Side of The Moon at the beginning of The Wizard of Oz, it all fits rather neatly together, similarly, someone did this. Get a box of tissues. https://youtu.be/ttXrb2tRNm0?si=HCsPd8ktB9DCao-p

Photo Credit - Emellia Shrimpton.