Crucible News
A Happy and Peaceful 2007 to all of you!
January 2007
It's been a shamefully long time since we updated here - sorry all, it just means we'll have more to say...
Overall it's been a good year with some lovely gigs, too many to mention all of them! We’re particularly pleased to have played at the first ever Blayden Races Folk Festival, which was held on a gorgeous hot and sunny day. Another small festival which blew us away was Wantage White Horse - thanks for a great time! Chippenham and Bromyard proved to be very expensive festivals for Helena, as she managed to acquire a fabulous set of D pipes at the former and bought the fiddle she'd been 'dating' all summer at the latter (thanks Glen and Bill)! Gav probably bought and sold lots of instruments too but none of us can keep track...
It wouldn't be a typical Crucible year if we hadn't embarked on a long and foolish journey and so in August we headed on the overnight ferry to Dranouter Festival, in Belgium (big tent, pictured), before coming back via a week at Sidmouth, in a very tightly packed car. We found this weird face in Ypres (pictured). Thanks are definitely due to all our friends who managed to squeeze tents, sleeping bags and other camping gear in their cars. You saved us from suffocation!
In personal terms it's been frantic. We spent the spring attending a succession of fabulous Sheffield weddings - congratulations to all the newlyweds. There've been two significant birthdays in the band this year, one of which was celebrated with a costume Playford ball played for by the most magnificent Belshazzar's Feast. Everyone made a real effort with their costumes, as you can see! Helena has successfully given up teaching for a life in Folk Arts admin while Gav has just gained his teaching qualification, despite all our warnings. If all this weren’t enough, Gav and Helena are in the throes of moving house.
We've also all been busy with our other projects.
Hekety have been really busy while
Jabadaw are moving into the next phase of their existence. The boys have been experimenting with Metal Thrash Ceilidh music in the form of the
Glory Strokes, and Helena has been kept busy with a string of gigs depping with
Bellowhead. Gav and Richard have completed their inaugural dance-outs with the Grenoside sword team (pictured) and
Pecsaetan, our morris team, are also thriving with lots of talented new members. There is now the new
Sheffield Eurosession (see us learning some bouncy Basque dances) to keep Helena even more busy, not to mention IVFDF, the roving student folk festival which will find its home in Sheffield in 2008.
It's a good job with all this going on that we've had two great new year breaks on the beautiful Island of Arran.
Here is a picture of a friend we made there. Somehow it manages to be peaceful through the storms, rain, hail, wind and power cuts. This year a most enterprising team of dedicated madmen managed to make a set of bagpipes from only a binliner, 3 recorders and some string, to pipe in the Haggis (accompanied on a more conventional set by Helena!).
If you have any questions or you want to get in touch, don't forget you can join our Message Board or contact us through our myspace (everyone’s doing it!). We're also currently updating our diaries so please get in touch if you'd like to talk to us about bookings.
Till the next update, hopefully less than 15 months away,
Love, Crucible
