This year's Lancaster Music Festival was even better than the last. Word seems to be spreading and most venues were full up with an extraordinary mix of regulars, festival goers and passers by who had dropped in to see what was happening. Most of the venues were an easy walk from each other and on the Friday night we saw jazz, folk rock, pop, country and blues. Some we just sampled for a few minutes and others we stayed for a few songs before moving on.
On Saturday I spent a lot of the time leafleting passers-by and encouraging them to drop in to Atticus Accordions for music, wine and cake. We had brought the blues guitarist Arbie J up from Birmingham to play in the shop and the sound of his steel resonator guitar more than made up for any lack of amplification. Kit's line up for the day reflected the diverse music on offer elsewhere with folk blues guitarist Kristi Michelle, traditional and new blues from Arbie Jay, new folk blues from David Kelly, indie pop from Faraday and Ice Pops for Breakfast and the unclassifiable L A Shrimp.
Arbie J had another slot in the evening supporting a very 1960s looking American country/folk group, The Kilcawley Family, who played guitar, harmonica and auto-harp.
We ended the evening in the packed out Robert Gillow listening to The Balkanics who had everyone jumping to wild fiddle music from Eastern Europe.
We saw so many acts that it is hard to remember them all and I have not got time to list them all. I'll just say that we ended our visit to the festival with Max's Blues Club. A special session of the regular blues and country jam session organised by the redoubtable Max -Mississippi Max - Haymes who has been a part of the Lancaster music scene for as long as I can remember.
If there seems to be a slant towards blues and country music in my description that is mainly because that reflects my own taste and the fact that we were with Arbie J and missed most of the rock, pop and jazz events.
So perhaps we should have stayed up long past midnight and toured even more pubs, bars and clubs, and drunk even more whisky, wine and beer than we did.
Perhaps next year.
I came back to NuL and the disappointing news that I did not get the job I wanted with the WEA. So last night I began searching for flights to Cambodia.
As I did an email arrived from Viv who had noticed that the WEA have now posted details of another job in this area.
So now I have to decide if I will apply.
Should I stay or should I go?
Don't deafen me with your reply.