visit from Jim

My friend Jim (from Red Dog Green Dog) visited Exeter yesterday - he's over from France for a while with his girlfriend. They'd just been up in Avebury and he was on his way to a forest gardening course at Dartington.

Good timing, as we were having our monthly Drone session at St.
Stephens church. He came along and contributed some lovely concertina and soprano sax. Unfortunately he didn't bring his mbira along (it's in an awkward tuning). This is the first time he's played with us.

His girlfriend Jess is an artist, so I suggested that if she wanted to come along, perhaps she should bring a sketchbook or something. In the end she didn't come, but we (unexpectedly) had an artist called Lou Phillips busily working away at the back of the church during our first set. She'd met Henry at some event last weekend and seemed very excited about the idea of creating visual art in conjunction with improvised music:


Lou Phillips with her work all produced during the first set
James T - piano, percussion, poetry
Henry - percussion
Keith - acoustic bass guitar, mandola, percussion
John - acoustic guitar, bouzouki, mandolin, voice, percussion, low whistle
me - saz, balalaika, acoustic bass guitar, percussion
Vaughan - voice, acoustic guitar, percussion, slide whistle(?)

with

Jim - concertina, soprano saxophone

Pete - voice, piano
Jo - voice, hang
Jeff - voice

Exeter City Council - plumbing and vehicle noises

A very floaty, mellow, multi-layered session. Also, interestingly, Jo brought along a hang, a curious percussion instrument someone once described to me as "a cross between a steel drum, a UFO and a gamelan orchestra". Dan C (who has DJ'd with us in the past) mentioned that he's been playing one of these lately, when I last saw him.

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