Andy arrived promptly as usual and we settled down for a lovely rehearsal. It was such a beautiful evening that soon we took our beer into the garden and had a little chat about life, the universe and how we both love walking in the evening and at night.
We accidentally pulled off a lovely version of 'She Moved through the Fair' and followed it up with a rather mixed jam on the mixolydian mode. Both Andy and I get a bit fret-confused as we are more used to jamming on guitar than bouzouki and/or ukulele. Still we started to make some progress, and I found myself recalling some approaches from the days when I played African guitar with Folo Graaf from Sierra Leone. Funny how things can come back to you when you are not expecting them, and connections arise between different parts of your artistic life. It feels a little way to go yet, but perhaps we'll make some instrumental bouzouki and ukulele pieces to join the songs ...
Andy was particularly tickled to see that I had got a review for Doodlebug Alley in the County Times, Powys. Apparently he knows the guy who did the article - a chap called Barry. He even knows where he sits in his local pub, and is looking forward to having a chat with him about it. It was a nice review, so it shouldn't be the start of any alehouse fisticuffs.
We finished off with our version of Lord Randall. Our version seems to really be about the relationship between Lord Randall and his mother! Dialogue is such fun to sing, especially when you do both voices yourself. He's come out rather falsetto whereas his insistent mother is deeper and delivers her questions with a sinister gravitas.
These long summer evenings are blissful. Have to make the most of them.
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