Good Friends are not that far away!

It’s been quite a wonderful, strange (and hectic) period since my last newsletter, ‘fAITH’ did a couple of gigs which totted up a bit of much needed money for firstly the ‘Crackerjacks’ Children’s Trust, the venue was at Stourport Civic Hall and secondly a great gig for ‘Richard’s Wish’ a charity in aid of a family who are dealing with a non operable brain tumour and research for St Giles Hospice, the venue was held at The Running Horse, Bewdley. Tickets are already selling well for our annual gig for the Omwabini orphanage in Kenya (photo below), if by any chance you can’t make the 7^th November in Kidderminster and you would like to make a donation please make all cheques payable to ‘Friends of Omwabini’ you can get contact details through this site or through our Facebook site

https://www.facebook.com/faithbookings if you would like tickets they can be put aside with your name attached, all we need is a telephone contact to secure, the gig is extra special for myself and Graeme as the Project Coordinator James Bunyasi is coming all the way from Kenya to see us play on his way to Canada. ‘Omwabini’ by the way is a name derived from local Luhya language in western Kenya meaning “a Rescuer”.

What happened next possibly could never have happened without the Worldwide Web, firstly I met up with my old band mates from Orphan and Back Street Slide, thirty years since we were last together, it was wonderful to get together with Terry Biddulph (top photo centre), Phil Campion (lower photo), Richard Westwood (top photo right) and their respective wives. Terry and Richard are both now in a Fleetwood Mac tribute band called ‘Dreams’ and after seeing them play they’re a cracking outfit; catch them if you can https://www.facebook.com/DreamsofFM?fref=ts I then took a holiday with my wife Elizabeth to several of the wonderful Baltic countries including Russia and Estonia and the highlight was meeting up in Helsinki, Finland with after some fifteen years my band mate from ‘The Road North’

Pauliina Syrjälä and her beautiful new baby Hertta, she is now teaching the Kantela harp at the Sibelius Academy where she studied and completed her Masters of Music degree, http://www.pauliinasyrjala.com/ we were treated to a wonderful private impromptu recital by two of her students, the Kantela really is a fabulous sound, Pauliina obviously teaches them well. We both really did forget until that moment how beautiful the sound of the Kantela is, I also got to not only look at, but play a Scandinavian ‘Hardanger’ fiddle which I’ve wanted to play for years!

We had a wonderful, if only too short time to catch up but chatted as Pauliina took us on a ferry to the lovely island of Suomenlinna where we had lunch and then unfortunately after a quick tour around Helsinki said our very sad goodbyes, hopefully we will meet again soon! While on holiday we also visited “Wonderful Wonderful Copenhagen”, the last time I was there with my fiddle strapped to my back was with friends from the folk band ‘Lirum Larum’ in 1974, time flies when you’re enjoying yourself! The long lost 1983 Orphan video taken at the Lafayette club in Wolverhampton has now been tracked down and will hopefully have a showing soon, looking forward to seeing that. Now that holidays are almost out of the way recording for the ‘fAITH’ album ‘Captain Grez & the Professor’ will recommence, looking forward to getting back in the studio. Oh and only in the last couple of days made contact with two guys I booked for my folk club I ran in Birmingham around 1970 Marc Brierley http://www.marcbrierley.org.uk/ and awesome guitarist Steve Cross, a fantastic acoustic act,