Hooray! We did it! Two hours of folk rocking on the beautiful village green at Fornham All Saints with a great turn out of village folk, complete with picnics and good cheer!

The Bounty Hounds ride again, at Fornham All Saints - July 2008

The rain held off, picnic tables and chairs appeared, and the village green quickly looked ready for a party! This time around, the “do” was held a lot earlier in the year, meaning we could actually see our audience as the daylight remained much later, and it was great to see people dancing, clapping and having a good time!

Our Fornham Set 2008 contained all the old favourites plus lots of new material, proving that our regular rehearsals in the village hall have been nothing if not productive over the past twelve months. We were happily able to fulfil a special request for New York Girls, but not for Whisky in the Jar (twice!) - sorry folks, it’s not in our repertoire but Andy might just have the Thin Lizzy version up his sleeve if you all keep asking!

The Band!

There appeared to be a certain amount of heckling from some family members but thankfully we couldn’t hear it - ha ha! Special thanks go out to Mel (for whistling), Gill (for freezing & photography), Sasha (for running the Bounty Pups’ creche), to everyone involved in setting up the stage and organising this event, and of course to our fabulous audience.

Same time next year? I hope so!

Getting quite excited now and looking forward to our next gig coming up on Saturday. We’ve been asked to return to Fornham All Saints village green to perform in front of all the good residents, many of whom must have encountered us last year at the Scarecrow Festival. I wish I had photos of all the scarecrows but, suffice it to say, it was an outstanding event and you should have been there!

This time round it’s just a plain out and out excuse to have a party on the green following on from an Open Gardens event the prevous weekend.

I must say, however, from a performance point of view, it was probably one of the scariest things I’ve ever done. I’m pretty new to the world of gigging and it’s been a pretty steep learning curve over the last year and a half. So to find myself on the back of a small flat-bed truck, in front of an entire village, with disco lights shining in my eyes and inadequate monitor feedback (I basically couldn’t see or hear anything!), was disconcerting to say the least. What I didn’t realise at the time was that loads of people were dancing and having a really great time! Remember, we couldn’t see them, but they could certainly see us!!

Fornham Scarecrow Festival 2007

Anyway, despite the technical difficulties, we have been invited to return and, weather permitting, I reckon it’ll be another great gig! And I will try to remember those famous words …. “Don’t Panic!”