This weekend was Bromyard Gala weekend and what a splendid event it was. Vintage tractors, shire horses, Gwatkins cider stall, steam engines, candy floss, fairground rides, WI produce tent, and loads more. It was very well attended and might even have broken attendance records which is great news for the long term health of this terrific event.
Bromyard Sessions provided music for the Exhibitors’ Party on Saturday Night and a good time was had by all. There were about 1500 exhibitors in all and a good number of them were in the arena for the concert.
It kicked off with a foot stomping set by Deadmoney Duo – aka Peter and Cohen Kilcoyne. Then I bashed out a few and was joined by Cohen for the last couple. He played some great concertina on the old shanty “One More Day” and a lovely electric fiddle solo on Randy Newman’s “Louisiana 1927″. Foxtail Soup finished off the first half with a nice mixture of cultured folk and sing-along songs.
The second half kicked off with a lively set from Snakebite – a bluegrass trio made up of Bromyard Sessions regular Al Clearwaters on guitar together with his chums Mike and Ian on mandoline and 5-string banjo respectively. I then threw folk music out of the window for a set of Kinks/Stones/Beatles stuff and Foxtail Soup finished off the night with their “Irish Set” mde up of jigs and reels and the well known Irish repertoire, “Whiskey In the Jar”, “Black Velvet Band”, etc.
I’d like to thank all the musicians for doing a great job and for supporting the Gala by doing it for free! I’d particularly like the thank John Taylor for a major contribution in not only performing with Foxtail Soup but also in managing the sound system for all of us.
