We played a couple of gigs at the end of the summer... one at the Rendezvous, St. Helens, as part of a vintage fair (we played and sang 'oldies' on the piano, rather than our usual folk repertoire), one at Victoria Park, St. Helens (which we also compered) and one at The Brink, Liverpool, as part of Hope Fest.
The first was great fun; the second was very hectic and stressful but we appreciated the opportunity to reach a potentially wider audience; the third was very quiet but those who were there seemed to really enjoy themselves, and it was for such a good cause.
Unfortunately very shortly after those gigs Ruth became ill and had to attend hospital (nothing, we hasten to add, to do with any of the gigs).
Ruth's slowly but surely on the mend now, but it has given us a chance to reassess what we're doing with Moss & Jones. Obviously, we would still love for you to buy our CD (and if you have already, and you liked it, feel free to write us a little review on your blog, or Facebook, or twitter and @ us in) and we still welcome radio and podcast airplay, but in terms of gigs, we're going to have a little rest. We normally put on a Christmas gig, full of carols and Yuletide songs, but unless people are really clamouring for such a thing (or unless a venue wants to pay us to put on such a gig and help with the organisation...) we're going to take a break from gigging until the new year, although you can download our Christmas carol from last year if you like to 'tide you over'!
Come the new year, we want to try to build up more of an audience, so that when we put on gigs ourselves we can be assured of a reasonable turnout. We're going to take it all 'back to basics' - go to more open mic events, attend folk clubs, possibly even go busking... we're going to use the interim time to practise our instruments, and just play together for fun. It's so easy to lose sight of that side of things, what with having to have a 'social media presence', an up-to-date blog, a CD to flog in order to try to at least break even, 'networking' to try to do, and so on... it's meant to be fun after all.
When we started this, making music together, we agreed that if it ever stopped being fun all together, we'd stop. To be honest, we nearly did... but instead, we're going to make it fun again.
See you very soon!
Ruth & Marc
xx
