Moondancing for the solstice

On Sunday my band @theriverkicks made our third third appearance at a little druid event in the woods of Hertfordshire. They just keep asking us back and we are happy to play. We were a bit reduced with just four of us this time. There was @daniellemurray on various wind instruments plus violin, @purplesinger on piano, Bob on flute and me on drums.

Our set is mainly old folk tunes and we had a few different ones this time that were new to me. Unfortunately we did not get to rehearse these and so it was a matter of figuring them out in the moment. We are all experienced enough to do that now.

I am sharing our rendition of Van Morrison's Moondance that we have played many times. I quite like a bit of swing and it lets me experiment a little with the rhythms. The ride cymbal can do a good gong impression at the end. Bob's singing has really come along with some tuition from our pianist who also runs a choir.

The venue is quite rustic with no mains power. We used a couple of battery units to run the mixer and PA. Even with a small audience you need some amplification, although not for the drums in this case. I cropped the audience out of the video for their privacy, but there were about 30 of them in all.

The set went pretty well apart from some flase starts and me messing up some lyrics. Last year it poured with rain, but it was quite nice this time. Afterwards the druids went off for their solstice ceremony whilst I headed home.

I am going to be playing some more gigs with these people in other configurations soon. One of those is with me on guitar, so I need to practice that too.

Rock on!

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