A LOT TO CATCH UP ON!!

Well - a lot has happened since the last post - Frank's last 2 gigs (Congleton Beer Festival and Brian's Bristol Birthday Bash) and a welcome return to The Bruce, so let's take them one at a time!

The Congleton Beer Fest was as good, if not better than last year (the weather was certainly better!) and, although Andy wasn't with us, we managed to get the marquee rocking again, and everyone had a great time! Steve Shuttleworth from the Round Table was round and about with his camera the whole evening, and captured the ambience of the whole event - click on the link below to see his Flickr album (when the album opens, click on the "Slideshow" icon at the top right, to see the photos more easily) - there's not only photos of us, but of all the Congolians enjoying themselves!

Congleton Beer Festival photos

And so to Bristol!! On Saturday 5 July, the band de-camped to Wooton-under-Edge to play at a joint birthday party for 7 people ranging in age from 21 to 60! The venue was the "farmstead" of Brian and Pat and, although the weather was fairly kind throughout the day, and allowed the band gear to be set up in the barn, and several gazebos to be erected to protect the crowd, from about 5 in the afternoon, the heavens opened, and by 8:00pm there was a river flowing through the "dance floor"! However, we did not let this deter us, and we'd like to think that we made a pretty decent fist of entertaining 120 odd people for the night - in fact, we went on at 8:15pm and (with a couple of beer breaks in between) played until 12:45 in the morning - eventually had to stop because Paul was hoarse (and we'd run out of songs anyway!).
Here's some photos (some are a bit blurred - but, then, so were we by the end of the night!) - again, click on the Slideshow icon to see the whole lot more easily

Brian's birthday bash photos

Chrissie, Frank, Matt,Dave and Andy stayed under canvas overnight, and did look a bit bedraggled in the morning (Paul and Hugh got the short straws and had to sleep in beds in the house!), but the bacon butties cooked on barbecues the following morning (washed down with beer!) did help a little bit - and it had stopped raining by then (just)!

Finally, a return to The Bruce on Saturday 12 July, and the first gig without Frank. A bit of sphincter twitching to start with (not helped by there only being about 5 people in the pub when we started!). However, we got warmed up, more people came in, and if the neighbours hadn't complained and forced us to stop at 11:30, I think we would have still been going at Sunday lunchtime!

So now we have a couple of weeks to re-group before the next gig at the Jolly Sailor on Thursday 31 July. We are going to take the opportunity to look at some new numbers, and maybe play around with the line-up - Matt fancies trying his hand on lead guitar, and Dave fancies trying the bass for a new numbers - so let's see what happens!

New gigs have been added to the list on the right hand side, so check them out, and we hope to see you at one or more of them (we'll also send some Facebook invitations out - how cool is that?!)