Living It
It’s been a crazy week and a bit with plenty of gigs, lots of driving, camping, radio stuff and new faces. If I’d never met you before then it was a pleasure, thanks for coming and for saying hello. And if you bought a CD then thanks all the more, you helped me drive home!
We had Ditch the TV in Coventry with Malc Evans and co. A great crowd who gave me the opportunity to try a few new songs. Then the Warwick folk festival with a goodly bunch of 500 or so in the Market place.
New Wine was an eye opener. I was expecting a festival, it was a conference with music. I’m glad to have had the gigs there, thanks to all who forsook Adrian Plass to hear me sing about seagulls and the like. And to the Friday night mob from Worthing who seemed very pleased to have a song about their home town.
But it was such a ‘nice’ place. Martin Smith packed them in to one venue for what seemed like celebrity worship. I wanted to swear on stage just to see what would happen. There were lots of people there that I think were hungry for more than perfect worship and reading or listening about other people being radical. The market place was full of organisations telling you about people across the world that were in desperate need for aid and shops selling you perfect sounding saccharin worship. There was nothing pointing out the poverty on the doorstep of middle england. It just seemed (for me, and I realise that for other people it’s a very needed week) that it was totally irrelevant to life in the real world.
After New Wine it was a small, open air gig in Kettering. A great mix of folk, a young metal band playing as well and some real stuff going on. My kind of show.
At the end of all that I went along to a church in Coventry to here a survivor of 9-11 talk about his experience in the twin towers. Came away feeling like it was a big show. As much as he said it wasn’t religion, couldn’t help thinking it really was.
So glad to end up back at the rag tag group of people, ex cons, junkies, homeless, doctors, families and shopkeepers that make up the scruffy church I love.
Nice one, Rob!