indoor musical picnic

23rd August 2015
secret location near Canterbury

Tom Holden and I, having only played in front of a group of listeners twice during the year-and-a-bit that we've been working on music together, and both times involving picnics, decided this might be a good practice to continue. The second picnic had also involved a walk (to No Man's Orchard near Harbledown), so the walk/picnic concept was adopted. Unfortunately, extremely heavy rain was forecast for the afternoon, so there wasn't much of a turnout. But four people, and not the ones I would have inspected, did show up at the designated start point. It was local singer-songwriter/guitarist/pianist/raconteur/all-round-lovely-person Luke Smith; Juliet who I knew vaguely from the UKC Psychedelics Society who organised the first Breaking Convention and since had a very weird dream experience involving me; Loyda from the Canary Islands, who's with Phil from Lapis Lazuli, and Max who does the "Local Hoot" programme on CSR radio in Canterbury. We managed to get in most of the truncated/ version of the walk I'd come up with before the rain came down, and where we were going there was shelter. So the "picnic" happened inside a trailer. We were also joined by Miriam and her boyfriend, Libby and Dave, and Owen and Aidan from Arlet who, after we played some tunes, played some brilliant clarinet-and-accordion duets. It turned into a lovely social occasion, nothing like what I'd expected, but even better for it.

Neither Tom nor I played particularly well this time, but a few of my rough recordings were worth preserving, I think:

Listen Here

Whether we'll carry on as a "picnic band" remains to be seen. The weather is perhaps too unreliable in these parts, and no one enjoys a soggy picnic.