THE WINDMILL IS ROLLING OUT THE WELCOME MAT, AND WE'RE SAYING GOODBYE MATT!!



 As the good old Walrus in Alice in Wonderland said, "The time has come..." and next Friday will see us bidding a fond farewell to our extraordinary (for a number of reasons!) bass player, Matt Johnson, who is heading to pastures new to become a master baker (just checked the spelling of that obviously!) and is showing a singular lack of commitment by refusing to commute from Lancaster for band practice and gigs!

Matt has been with us since 2007 (I know, it seems a LOT longer), and his history with the band is littered with experiences - most of them achingly funny, and some of them downright scary! Here is not the place to recount them in detail, partly because you just had to be there, but to give you a flavour, here's a bulleted list of some of them:
 

• Matt "forgot" that we were booked to do a live appearance on Canalside Radio back in 2009; in fact, he forgot so badly, that we had to go and pick him up from work and transport him bodily to the studio, arriving about 5 minutes before we were due "on air"!
• Matt made his debut for us in 2007, at The Bruce; the first number in the first set was "Don't Believe A Word" - a slow song that starts with a bass intro (a bad move on our part, I'll admit!). Matt launched into his D&C career playing his intro at around 3 times the speed it should have been at, leaving the rest of us to decide whether to let him carry on solo, try and match his frantic pace, or rugby tackle him to shut him up!
• We played a gig in Hertfordshire, and Matt was scheduled to get a lift home with Chrissie who, unfortunately, left without telling him! Luckily, Matt managed to blag a lift off 2 kind people who were coming back to Bolton. Unluckily, even though Macclesfield is en route to Bolton (well it was last time I looked), they decided to drop him off at the Sandbach junction of the M6, leaving him to thumb his way home from there!
• When we played in Bristol, Matt shared a tent with our former guitarist Frank (not known for his love of outdoor living!); their "settling down" at the end of the evening was, apparently, like a cross between The Waltons and Brokeback Mountain - no wonder Frank left for home about 5 in the morning!
• Finally, Matt is renowned for his love of all things tweed, and is rarely seen dressed in anything else - however, his decision to try and purchase a tweed bass case was perhaps a step too far. Fortunately, it doesn't seem to have seen the light of day yet.

All these things, and more, and especially his brilliant bass playing (apparently he'd never played one before he joined us!), have made us love him like a brother, and we'll miss him enormously - even if getting him to remember gig dates and turn up to practice on time has been a never ending chore!

We hope you will all come down to The Windmill at Whiteley Green on Friday 20 December to give him a great send-off AND to kick start your own Christmas celebrations. It's always a great atmosphere in The Windmill, and we'll be taking a cruise through all the old favourites, just to see if Matt can get them right for once!!

A newly shorn Matt playing at Goosfest in October!