How how HOW can my last blog post be from June?! I really thought I had blogged at least a little bit more than that. My own sense of time has been a little bit out of sync with the speed of things on the internet - the gigs have kept happening, the videos have kept coming in, the occasional new song has been making its way out.
What is really unforgivable is that I never blogged about the LINE (Live in the North East) gig in July - I think you can really blame Scotland for this and for being so darn distracting afterwards. In the end the date got moved from Thursday to Tuesday (thanks to the amazing LINE team who seem able to pull a gig, including full audience, out of nowhere, just like that - I appreciate it takes a lot of work to make things look so effortless!) As a consequence of the change in date though I ended up going to Scotland after and not before - doing a thousand miles or more on my own in the car and soaking up the beauty of the Caledonian summer. I may come back and post some pictures that’ll attest to why my attention may have been elsewhere!
This was an amazing gig on a boiling hot summer’s evening opening for the fantastic Steve Pledger, who up close was every bit the intense and authentic performer I had been led to believe he would be. I was thrilled to have the chance to duet with him on There We Are - the one-off performance of which was captured for the LINE youtube page, link to which below. LINE run some pretty incredible gigs, but more than that they are all just lovely people who really do just care, there were so many sweet surprises along the way and we’ve kept in touch (updates to Jo’s boot collection a concern now dear to my heart) despite the distance (did I mention that I tried to get there via Norfolk? Not the quickest route so I’m told). The audience were really welcoming and we were lucky enough to have Roots and Fusion’s Rick Stuart there who has blogged a review of the gig here; I also had one very good friend come to watch who I knew from way back in my last couple of years of teaching. We all took advantage of Northumberland’s spectacular beaches the next day.
LINE, you wonderful lot, I wish you weren’t so far, but it was one of the highlights of my year meeting you.