last St Stephens Drone of 2005

This was our usual first-Wednesday-of-the-month slot at St. Stephens church in Exeter High Street.

Keith - mandola, acoustic bass guitar
James T - piano, percussion, poetry
Pete - banjo, balalaika, mandola, piano, percussion, acoustic bass guitar
Melski - flute, percussion, voice
me - saz, balalaika, percussion

A wet and windy night, with the Anti-Nowhere League playing down the road at St. George's Hall...

More challenging than most, this one. The absence of Henry meant things were rhythmically more fluid than usual, which isn't necessarily a problem. But it felt at the time that things weren't gelling at all. Still, it doesn't seem that bad, listening back to the MiniDiscs today.


St. Stephens (left), amidst devastation, having survived The Blitz
Pete has come to some previous sessions as part of Vaughan's improvised voice group. This time he arrived with a 5-string banjo, and tried his hand at various other instruments. James delivered another of his library catalogue-based "found poems" - this time titles starting with the pronoun "It..." Because of the amount of rain, the sounds of passing buses were more pronounced than usual (more of a "woooooosh" effect). Keith apparently found himself playing the bassline for the folk song "A Sailor's Life" at one point, although I didn't notice until he pointed this out later. Melski arrived quite late (having been giving a talk to about music therapy at another church, in Heavitree) so she didn't actually make it onto any of the excerpts from my edit:

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