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Our appearance at Leigh Festival was very different from anything else we've ever done: apart from anything else, we were not performing as Triangle but as backing vocalists for the excellent Roy Mette, whom you may know as a singer/songwriter. Roy approached us one wet evening in March, down in Leigh-on-Sea, and asked us if we would be interested in a project he has started to record and perform some of his songs on the theme of pirates. We agreed to listen to his current CD, not knowing really what to expect. When we played the songs we were utterly blown away by them. They are seriously good (and you don't have to take our word for it — get a taste at his "piratical" MySpace site). Roy launched the "pirates project" with this gig at Leigh, accompanied by fellow instrumentalists Phil Burdett and Dave Richardson, with the two guys and us on backing vocals, and, despite the sound system, which did nobody any favours, we all seemed to go down quite well. We know that Roy intends to record more of the "pirates project" and has asked us to be a part of it, so watch this space...
Mim
The monthly folk night at Henley (that's the village of Henley
in
Suffolk, not Henley-on-Thames, in case you were wondering) is organised
by our friend and recording engineer Mike Briggs. We can't get there
very often because of the difficulties of Mim getting back from London
in time, so we were pleased when an opportunity arose to take part in
June. The star of the evening was a young singer/songwriter, James
Dixon, who performed some really impressive material, but the first
half was taken up by a succession of floor acts, of which Triangle was
one.
We were restricted to just three songs, and we wanted to show a
range of musical styles, so we chose three seasonal numbers that are
all quite different in feel and arrangement: Rosebud in June, The
Barghist Coach and The
Rubies of Suffolk. All three will be on the new
album and two are original (Barghist
Coach written by me and Mim, and
Rubies
written by Mim alone), so this was a good opportunity to test
the reaction to them. We were very pleased with the reaction,
particularly to Rubies
of Suffolk, which definitely seemed to strike a
chord with people. If you've ever sat at a desk in London, fed up with
commuting and dreaming of the weekend when you can go
strawberry-picking, this song is for you! The only dampener on the
evening was that Sophie wasn't feeling 100% and we had to leave before
the end of James's set.
Sophie
We were delighted to be invited to take part in the 4th Suffolk Folk Festival, as one of five bands providing music in Woodbridge's Elmhurst Park on the Sunday afternoon. The weather could have been better, but although grey, it was at least dry, and there was a fair-sized audience, so we weren't singing to one man and his dog!
Our good friends Kiss the Mistress kicked off the afternoon's entertainment with a blinding set that got the event off to a great start; if you haven't heard them yet, we can strongly recommend that you take any opportunity to do so. Cruel Folk were as brilliant as ever and, as we didn't perform In Memoriam, probably won the record for highest body count of the day. The Bounty Hounds (fronted by festival co-organiser John Bosley) and the Simon Hopper Band were both new to us, but both were enjoyable, with the Bounty Hounds performing some great foot-tapping numbers and Simon singing some lovely, thoughtful songs.
We were fairly pleased with the way our own set turned out, although we do need to work on timings — we didn't get through the whole set we'd planned as we hadn't allowed for introductions and applause! (This would be a combination of us all being complete gasbags — but modest with it! SM) But the self-penned numbers went down particularly well, which is always pleasing, and the radio mikes worked beautifully (almost too well, in fact, as they picked up the wind noise as well as our voices). We still don't like using fixed mikes, but they do seem to be more practical for outdoor performances. But, then again, we've had bad outdoor experiences with fixed mikes as well ...
Sophie
This was a bit of a surprise, as we hadn't expected to be over in Havering in April, and particularly not on a Saturday. But it just so happened that a free evening for us coincided with an appeal at fairly short notice for musicians to take part in a folk weekend at the Golden Lion in Romford, the new home of Havering Folk Club; so off to Romford we went, and had a whale of a time. We performed a short set of songs which went down so well that they invited us back as their special guests for the Christmas folk session — thanks guys! There was a wide range of music to listen to and enjoy, including some other unaccompanied singers, a fabulous guitar/fiddle duo, some great tunes and our favourite song about the Mouse Man of Kilburn. It's such a shame that the distance precludes us from going more often, because it really is a wonderful folk club, as we've said on these pages before.
Sophie