My friend Dave Watson invited me to join him for a charity gig at the Edinburgh Rudolph Steiner school last night. With Dave Christopher we had one rehearsal at which we practised four songs, one each of the two Daves’, my Green Lights All the Way and Burns’ Ye Banks and Braes. The gig went off last night and was fun – a nice simple arrangement: 3 of us unamplified, sitting round one mic. There was a nice buffet at the interval (I’d been preparing the quip Rudolph’s Diner and managed to deploy it to an audience of one, so I’m shamelessly quipping here).
The gig was a fundraiser for the charity Mary’s Meals, in this case providing backpacks full of basic school equipment – jotters, pencils – and a few household items – soap, towels – to a primary school in Malawi. The stage was covered in backpacks that had been collected and at the interval the audience helped to load them into a lorry to begin their journey to Malawi. Any scepticism was waylaid by a short film they showed of the last shipment they’d done. There are enthusiastic and able teachers, and thousands of kids desperate for learning, but writing equipment is practically non-existent. They showed one boy exploring his backpack and almost exploding with glee when he found not only a pencil but a ball-point pen (with which he immediately started drawing on his arm!). Sure, it won’t last forever but the motivational effect on both pupils and teachers outlasts the practical benefit. Hope he got a pencil-sharpener, though. And the money – £5.30 to feed a child for a year!
Madame and Pest are off to London for the weekend; I was to have gone too but I’ve been called for jury service on Monday. I’ll have a day of household clearing up and admin-type jobs then a day (I hope) of music, working on some current recordings and maybe a bit of practice for playing bass on some sessions for Fiona Thom later in the month.
My musical world:
– Norman Lamont recordings: four tracks nearly ready for a CD (if that’s the best way to put them out)
– the Wright Brothers: MySpace site there in skeletal form, no live gigs booked but we want them
– Gravy Spiders (or whatever they’re called now): back to rehearsals and sounding good again
– playing for others: Fiona Thom session coming up, hope to do some guitar for Sparrahawk too
– Guitar Craft: nobody to play with in Scotland as far as I know, so just practising on my own 🙁