Author Archives: Quentin Budworth

Sep 13 2008

Saturday 18th October – BIG NATIONAL CEILIDH DAY

BIG NATIONAL CEILIDH DAY

This is unashamed advertising for our fund raising community charity ceilidh at

Hessle Town Hall, near Hull on Saturday 18th October 
as part of the Big National Ceilidh Day raising money for Water Aid

It’s for a very worthwhile cause! Please use the ‘Contact us‘ page for tickets
Tickets £5 each, no bar so bring your own drinks/booze (cups) and nibbles
Everyone welcome!

Aug 22 2008

Whitby Folk Festival – Aug 21st 2008

Some of us Hull and North Lincs lot did Whitby Folk Festival sessions on Thursday. We got there at about 10.30am and settled down at a cafe at the end of the north cliff area in the town, drank lots of tea, ate some sausage, eggs and beans brunch then played on our instruments.

      

Made John Kirkpatrick‘s session in the Middle Earth Pub early afternoon and the 422 session later in the day at the same pub.  Both sessions were different and both great. The pub was full but that didn’t detract from the session – then that’s easy for me to say as I had a seat!

Some of us Hull lot off to Shrewsbury Folk Festival now as I blog – and no doubt will have a good time there.

Aug 15 2008

Competitive Swingball

As a ceilidh band we take rehearsing very seriously – unless the weather is nice and there’s a swing ball tournament to be had. 

So todays rehearsal went well, got covered what we needed to and then spent the rest of the afternoon in the garden… turns out Liz, the piper, or “Whistling Wainright”, as her Swingball name is, has a killer instinct to win. 

“Scrapey Sean” (his Swingball name – it was all getting a bit silly at this point!), the violin player, bore the brunt of Liz’s brutal swingball skills and lost miserably. 

However “Mart the Bang”, percussionist, beat “Whistling Wainright” backhand – so she melted into a pile of goo.  Losing is not an option for Liz.

Hey ho, a good days work done by all 🙂

Jul 2 2008

Session/workshop pictures

Emma, who’s playing bodhran in the session, brought her brother, Matthew Kitchen, along and he kindly took these photo’s of the French and early music session on 22nd June at the Beverley Folk Festival – thanks Matthew!

                                   Sunday morning session

                                                 Shawm

                                                

Jun 25 2008

French and early music workshop

We did a workshop/session on French and early music on Sunday morning at Beverley Folk Festival.  We had recorders, accordion, percussion and fiddle with Quentin on gurdy and pipes and me on shawm, we ran through Bear Dance, Branle l’Offical and the old favourite Horses Brawl then we did some French bourrées, a Morvan bourrée and Tricotada.

The session was full and we hopefully passed on some ideas and new tunes to those that went.

To finish with, John aired one of his own compositions (composed in France) and people spontaneously got up to dance – always a sign of a good tune! 

Jun 6 2008

Braveheart re-enactment at Cave Castle

We did a ceilidh at Cave Castle on a Wednesday night.  It was Hull University’s Drama Department’s end of year do to see the final year students off.  They had a “Grafter’s” award ceremony, which finished just after 10pm then we were due to play… only then, tradition has it, that all the men go to the lake in the grounds of Cave Castle for a cigar.  So off they toddled leaving us with a load of women on the dance floor with no male partners to dance with.

After 20 minutes (now after 10.30pm) we decided for drastic action.  Liz got her pipes out and  I, armed with darabouka and tambourine, went to pipe the boys back up to the dance floor.

This all worked very well.  Got to the 70ish lads near the lake, Liz started piping and we started drumming and sure enough they started to follow.  About half way up the hill to the castle we realised no one was following us.  We looked back, only to see two lines of men ready to charge at each other…  then followed the Braveheart re-enactment.

A great roar ensued and the two battle lines ran at each other, Liz kept piping and we kept drumming and the two sides clashed.  After skirmishing for a few minutes they dusted their tux’s down and proceeded to be piped up to the castle and on to the dance floor.  What a laugh!

May 18 2008

Ceilidh yesterday

We did a ceilidh yesterday near York in a village hall in Sutton upon Derwent, a really lovely setting and atmosphere and we all very much enjoyed it as did the wedding guests. 

Liz really “did one” on the bagpipes! – she played for half an hour, really enjoyable (not only because it meant most of the band had some time off) but she really gets into the spirit and gets everyone jollying up there.  Quentin and Martin playing along on the djembe and darabouka made it hard for anyone not to clap along or dance!

Helen’s got some photo’s – will post them up soon. 

 

Apr 11 2008

Recording last week

Last week we spent a day in studio recording our own compositions, some romping early music stuff and our ceilidh sets for us to listen to and pick out the good points and see if any better arrangements could be had.

What fun – but hard work!  I think a lot of us hadn’t used our brains quite so intensely for a long time for the hours it took, from 9.30am – 4.00pm!!!  Got a good 11 tracks from it though.  So hopefully we’ll get some clips of it up on the web soon.  Thanks goes to Adam the sound guy who was great.

Quentin gurding, John on accordion and Helen on fiddle.

    

   

Mar 9 2008

Friend’s wedding

We did a wedding last night for two friends Helen and Gordon, in fact the sister of Liz our whistle player, it was a great do.  Eamon, the caller, really got the dancers going.

With it being, musically, a folky wedding, as both Helen and Gordon play, there was a session in the bar and a ceilidh in the next room, with guest spots in between dancing.  Sam Pirt on accordion and Richard on violin fair motored along with some music, while the buffet was consumed, which was brilliant.

Heather and Hannah, Helen’s nieces, played the first dance on flute and cello, a waltz composed by John our accordion player, with John accompanying. 

Then for the last dance along with the band, Sam, Richard, Bill, Anne, Carol, Laurie and the other session muscians (whose names escape me – sorry!), about 20 of us, played and everyone got up to dance!  What a great end to the night.

Jan 24 2008

Composing and wassailing

Some of us have been composing since Christmas and we have some cracking tunes to rehearse this new year.  

A few of the band braved the cold on January 13th to play at a Wassailing at Pickering Road Community Orchard for the Raving Maes to dance to.

It is the first wassailing held at the orchard – and it was a great sucess with around 70 people turning up to put toast on trees and pour cider on the roots of the young apple trees.  Hopefully the first of many to come there.

    web-page-size.jpg      webpage.jpg

Lots of bookings too and some possible studio time at Easter to record some tunes, what with playing for the Raving Maes as well it looks like 2008 is going to be a busy year for us.

Dec 10 2007

Our ceilidh bash

Well, it was good fun and lots of people dancing, which is the main thing.  We had 45 mins to set up before people arrived so it was a bit frantic but it all came together.

Quentin and John has a good go on the hurdy-gurdy and accordion, and friends Cameron and Mark did some piping and violin.  Martin also joined us on persussion, along with Quentin.   We all enjoyed ourselves and will have another ceilidh night next year in spring.

Oct 28 2007

Mrs B’s Cafe & Christmas

Mrs B’s excellent cafe’s website is now up and running.

We’ve been rehearsing for our Christmas Party on 23rd November which just involves a whole lot of playing and dancing (and rowdyness no doubt).  There’s a 7/8 tune to dance to.  I think the general consensus is that dancers will have to make this up themselves, with a bottle of wine prize for the most inventive dance moves – if we play this towards the end of the night maybe the odd rythyms won’t be noticed…

Oct 18 2007

Big National Ceilidh Day – Water Aid

On Saturday 18th October 2008 there is a Big National Ceilidh Day to raise funds for Water Aid.  We are having a ceilidh at Hessle Town Hall to raise funds.  

At 10.00pm all bands across the UK will be playing the same tune, Jamie Allen, and as many people as possible dancing the Circassian Circle.  Here are some sobering figures from the Big National Ceilidh Day’s website:

1.1 billion people in the world do not have access to safe water. This is roughly one sixth of the world’s population.

2.6 billion people in the world do not have access to adequate sanitation. This is roughly two fifths of the world’s population.

1.8 million children die every year as a result of diseases caused by unclean water and poor sanitation. This amounts to around 5000 deaths a day.

Oct 14 2007

French connections

A few of us went to Les Panards Dansants yesterday which was part of a weekend of French Traditional Music and Dance in Otley, near Leeds.  We have a ceilidh next May, in Hessle, which involves a weekend of people from Hessle’s twin town of Bourg de Thizy, France, visiting.   So it would be nice to play them some French music and do some French dancing as well as traditional English music and dance.

We have been playing some French traditional music recently as two of the band members have houses in France and have books of french music which are really interesting to play.  You can definitely hear the tunes that are perfect for hurdy-gurdy!

Sep 24 2007

Sunday afternoon playing and good coffee!

Sunday afternoon saw us down at the Humber Bridge park area outside a friends cafe playing music for people doing the British Heart Foundation’s walk across the bridge.  

Shelly’s coffee is great as is the food and the surrounding countryside – there’s just something nice about playing outdoors.  Thanks to Tim Waters for the photographs.