Sunday 16th September was the Acoustic Gathering in Scarborough.
The event was held in Peasholm Park. The stage was a small bandstand in the middle of a lake and the audience were sitting/lying/standing on a bank opposite relaxing, eating, drinking and generally chilling out. There was a small cafe and a bar open for refreshments and there was a really good atmosphere about the place. There were performers on stage from midday onwards and we played at about 8 p.m. There is a complete list of all the performers and more general info here.
Elliott Randall joined John and I for this performance. We first met Elliott when he played guitar on some of the tracks on our first album and we’ve been friends with him and his wife Jane ever since. I also sang on his remake of ‘Reeling In The Years’ last year.
About an hour before we were due to play it started chucking down with rain and I feared that we may end up playing to the ducks. Thankfully it cleared up fairly quickly and everything dried up nicely in the warm breeze. It was just starting to get dark as we were rowed across the lake to the bandstand and the sky had some lovely hints of red seeping through. It’s the very first time I’ve taken to the stage by rowing boat 
We disembarked in a small back stage area on the bandstand where they were back projecting live video shots onto a screen and doing other technical stuff. It’s been a while since John and I did a gig and so I must admit to starting to get a little nervous at this point. After a brief line check we started with ‘Take Care’ and followed that with ‘Effect Is Monotony’. The sound on stage was a bit weird with an echo bouncing back from the banks of the lake but we all seemed to manage to block it out after a while and settled into things. The lights from the stage and the shore shone on the water as we played and ducks were regularly flying in and landing just feet away right in front of us. Obviously ducks of good taste We continued with ‘After Hell’, ‘Violence’, ‘Complaints’ and then ‘Sleeping Satellite’ which as usual got a great cheer from the audience. The rest of the short set was ‘Rain Falling’, ‘Emergency’, ‘In Your Care’ and we ended with ‘One More Good Night With The Boys’.
I’m not exactly sure how many people were there but I’d guess at a couple of thousand or more. There was a good vibe from the audience across the water and I hope they had as good a time listening and watching as we did playing. After we’d finished we left the same way we came in, by rowing boat. We were rowed back to the boat dock serenely and had a nice cup of tea. Rock and roll eh?
So our first venture back to the stage for some time was a very pleasurable experience and big thanks to Steve Dickinson for inviting us to play at this event. Thanks also to Elliott for agreeing to do this show with us and to the boatman whose oaring skills delivered us safely to and from the bandstand. Hopefully I’ll have some pictures to put up very soon and we should also have some video footage of our performance too with a bit of luck.
