2001 Some News At Last 3rd March
Well Hellllllllooooooooo and hoorah and hooray! Here is some news from me. At last. I have had great trouble in updating my website. I won’t tell you the story cos it frightfully boring and has a lot to do with computers and not having enough chocolate. But it’s alright now.
Anyway here is a brief summary of what I’ve done over the year not necessarily in any particular order:
1. Got 3 size 10 & a half wellies for my grand piano to stop it from getting flooded. When you are buying 3 wellies you must go to Great Mills because being a big cheap store you are bound to find a spare welly in which case you can make an offer for it arguing that no-one else will want it unless they are also protecting their grand piano from floods.
My mum gave me this idea which is typical of my mum because she is a very practical person and will always come up with a logical yet rather interesting solution to a problem such as how to stop one’s grand piano from getting wet in a flood.
The next bit was quite difficult and dangerous as I had to get some strong men to lift up the piano momentarily as I slipped the wellies quickly onto it’s legs which on my piano have very fat ankles and nearly didn’t fit into them. Anyway there have been no floods but I suspect that if I hadn’t done this there would’ve been. Because that’s what always happens.
2. Did 2 gigs with Eddi Reader which was great. David Hughes and Colin Reid did one with us at Banbury Mill. We all enjoyed it immensely and we hope the audience did. Then me and Eddi played an informal few songs together at Cropredy 2000. Eddi sang ‘Perfect’ (it was in Keith Donnelly’s set, my besty friend, who will be doing the April gig with me at Oxford) and we had a great time generally over the festival as it was amazingly hot and we both had our kids with us. We had our own little hippy tent camp and the kids stayed up very late.
On the last night, Eddi and I decided to start a session in the hospitality tent. This was brilliant and Eddi sang so many songs and I sang songs I didn’t know I knew. Peggy (Dave Pegg bass playing guitar Fairport Convention) held out until about 5am. Jeff Hughes (actor you know from ‘Keeping Up Appearances‘ and ‘The Royle Family‘ playing guitar and bodhran) lasted extremely well and retired at about 6am. About 15 punters lasted the whole night as me and Eddi did. We fell into our tents at 8am. My tent was very simple, it was one of those small dome tent type ones with just 4 tent pegs. One on each corner.
3. Did a kind of tour with All About Eve. I say kind of because they were just doing gigs on weekends and I couldn’t do all of them. Anyhow – it was great. The audiences were much much much much younger than the ones you get at Fairport gigs but they were not as colourfully dressed as in they wore black mostly. But they were really professional as they clapped in all the right places, knew how to go ‘Wooo!’, bought my merch and heckled correctly. I had a lovely time and made some new friends including Julianne, Marty and Andy. You should be extremely impressed as All About Eve are famous because they have had a hit called ‘Martha’s Harbour‘ which got into the top ten. It goes:
‘You are a ocean wave, my love, crashing at the bow’ etc. You know.
I saw them at Cambridge Corn Exchange on the Fairport Winter Tour 2001 last Saturday. They were brilliant and Julianne sang the Sandy Denny song
‘Who Knows Where The Time Goes‘ fantastically. Anyway the Eves have asked me to go out with
them again and I will.
for their dates. I will be doing some of these most likely Guildford April 14, St Albans April 20, Burton On Trent May 5, Birmingham Ronnie Scotts May 6, Worcester May 11, Swindon May 12, Liverpool May 19, Beaumaris May 20, Winchester May 26, Bristol May 27, Cardiff July 20, Narbeth July 21, Penzance August 17 & 18. Anyway I WILL let you know.
4. My bird table broke. (See DIY) – (See also My Car Smells Of A Gerbil)
5. Have written lots of new songs. You will hear some of these when you come to Oxford
6. Haven’t recorded a new CD but wish I could. It’s one of those things that’ll happen at an unexpected time in an unexpected way I suspect.
7. Have got a annA rydeR banD. This has done one gig but if it works it will do many. Chris Knibbs who played on my CD ‘Pockets On Fire‘ will play trombone and some guitar, Kate Luxmoore who played with me at Warwick Folk Festival 2000 will play clarinet and bass clarinet. I have also got another player who will be making his first appearance at Oxford on April 21st. This band will be a bit unusual because of the instruments so I’m just wondering what’s going to happen.
8. Did quite a few support gigs for Fairport
in various venues all over the UK.
This is always fun especially when we use the highly recommended Good Pub Guide to find food. And drink.
9. Did another mini Germany tour which was most enjoyable but lots of driving. We go over on the ferry and drive across France, Belgium and half of Germany to reach small places to do wonderful little gigs in front of a great audience. It was in one of these places – Lunen near Dortmund that the now infamous ‘A.R.S.E.H.O.L.E.’ was formed between me and my German agents and promoters. This stands for annA rydeR Society Europe (Home Of Lasting Entertainment). It wasn’t sposed to spell a rude word but just ended up like that somehow.
This society ensures the longevity of the act and allows all kinds of interesting rules to be set up as well as accompanying paperwork to be drawn up describing what the society is all about, who can be in it, who can’t, what one must do when one is accepted as a member/honorary member/temporary member/audience member/necessary member etc etc. And other stuff which is decided on a whim and depends on how much any said person has had to drink.
10. Stuck to my New Year’s Resolution in the year 2000 for nearly 3 months. This was to have a party, go to a party, have a gig or go to a gig every Saturday. I thought I did really quite well but as usual I had no stamina and couldn’t keep it up.
11. My latest news is that I have a gig in Australia in 2002. Actually I’ve known about it for sometime but I thought I needed to say I had some latest news in case you think I’m not exciting enough. Also stuff like this tends to fall through if you tell people. And I’m doing a short tour in June in the northeast and other places. See the giglist
from annA