Tag Archives: harvest jazz and blues festival

Thursday 8th February 2024 – WE’RE BACK TO …

… where we were a few months ago with the freezer, and how it’s now jam-packed to the brim with food.

Actually, that’s quite good news because it means that I don’t have to worry too much about from where my next meal is coming.

Having said that though, there are half a loaf, a bread finger and four bread baps in there that are taking up some of the place and if I were to eat those there would me more room in there, but I’m not ready to do that yet. As long as I can continue to make bread, I’ll make it and if there’s any left over, I’ll freeze it for another time with all of the rest that’s in there.

That will give me something about which I can think the next time that I’m lying in bed tossing and turning 1.e.not a night like last night where, despite having a late night I was out like a light and remember nothing at all until I awoke.

First job was to check the blood pressure + 17.4/10.5, a bit of a change from 18.2/11.6 this morning. There were also some note to tape to the dictaphone because when the alarm went off I was on another planet somewhere

After the medication I came back here to start work – or, at least, to try to, but once more it was really difficult to get going this morning

Once I’d come back round into the Land of the Living I had a listen to the dictaphone to find out where I’d been during the night. This time, I had managed to go for a wander. There was a Led Zeppelin song going through my head last night. I was singing it and needed to know whether there was a background music being played with it or not. If the song had background music being played to it, it would be liable to tax. I’d have to pay money but how would I know whether there was any background music being played to it or not at this time of night when I’m asleep?

And I wasn’t surprised that I dictated that last night because I’ve given up being surprised by what goes on during the night

Later on there were two of my assembled pizzas. I had two of them done and they were in the fridge. They’d been in the fridge for several days. What I needed to do was to take them out and put the tomato sauce on. I was in the kitchen but it wasn’t mine. A small girl came along to help but I don’t know why she did that either.

So if I’m dreaming about my pizzas during the night that’s a sign of something, I’m sure. But putting the tomato sauce on top? No thank you very much

When the alarm went off I was dictating the notes for a radio programme. They included a young girl bassist. I was writing all kinds of notes about her and what she’d been doing. She was quite young. I’d made my way down from the start and I think that she was one of the ones who was almost near the end of the programme

All of that reminded me OF MATT MINGLEWOOD’S BASSIST whom I met when I was photographer for the Harvest Jazz and Blues Festival in Fredericton. As I believe I said at the time, she could come round and have a strum on my instrument any time she likes.

On the subject of radio programmes, that was today’s task but first I had to deal with a phone call. And it was exactly as I suspected it might be. "Mr Hall, we’ve had the blood test results. You have to stop taking medication X and take medication Y instead. I’ll send you a prescription."

So the prescription duly arrived, and then I had to change all of the print cartridges in the printer which is now printing and missing lines to I had to clean all of the print heads. So you ever have the feeling that it’s just not your day?

While I was printing off the prescription I printed off some paperwork about Strider. He’s now no longer officially mine and I hope that he has found a good home with his new owners.

As I have said before … "and on many occasions too" – ed … it’s a shame about Strider. We travelled tens of thousands of miles together from the semi-tropical climate of Georgia up to the frozen peri-Arctic wastes of Northern Labrador, as far as it’s possible to go by road northwards.

He’s just the right height for me to slide in and out and using the cruise control, I can drive him with just my left foot. But I’m over here and he’s over there and that’s that.

And Liz has been very helpful too. She sent me a little parcel that arrived today with a knee support in it and also a vegan cookbook, the same one that she used when she was starting out.

It’s all an early birthday present for me and she says that she hopes that I find the cookbook helpful. Secretly though, I think that she’s fed up of me asking her all these silly questions, but I know that you love me really.

Who was next to interrupt me? Ahhh yes – I had to send off my Leclerc order as I’m running low. And so are they with this farmers’ dispute. Quite a few items of the dairy line are not available and there are no substitutes

But that’s not a real problem if I run out of desserts. Strangely enough, as it happens, I have been fancying a rice pudding for ages so when I bake my bread for the weekend tomorrow morning, I might put a rice pudding in with enough to keep me going for several days.

So halfway through writing up my notes for the radio programme the Leclerc delivery came and so I had to sort out everything and put it away, as well as de-coring and de-pithing a couple of peppers to go into the freezer. I have to build my stocks back up.

Earlier on, I’d sent a message to my cleaner about the new prescription and she popped down to pick it up and tell me the latest gossip about the building.

Back at work and I’d almost finished the radio notes when Rosemary rang for a chat. Just a short chat this evening, only 52 minutes. Barely enough time for an exchange of pleasantries

By now it was tea-time and I fancied steamed veg with falafel and cheese sauce. But I found some veggie balls made out of kidney beans that needed eating and they went down with cheese sauce just as well as falafel.

While I’ve been typing up my notes, I’ve been listening to Al Stewart again and SWISS COTTAGE MANOEUVRES came round on the playlist.

Right near the end of the song are the words "and I couldn’t say what I had won or I’d lost, or even just what I had seen. But when I’m alone I just think of her once in a while". Does it remind you of anything?

It certainly reminds me of something. I’m still shaking my head over that three days in the High Arctic. It was the strangest period of the really strange life that I have led, and there’s still no explanation that I can work out about what was going on.

Let’s face it – I’m well aware of my own limits and this was way beyond anything that would have been contained within them. I certainly couldn’t explain whether I’d won or lost, and I certainly couldn’t explain what I had just seen.

But many of Al Stewart’s songs are like that. These are of some kind of vague pining for a lost adolescence that might have been, if only we had been older and wiser, and doesn’t that apply to most of us?

It’s often been said about “how I wish that I’d had all of my adolescence back, but with all the experience (and the money) that I have today. Wouldn’t things be different?”.

Mine certainly would have been, but I don’t think that it would have been better. It wasn’t until I left Crewe and came over here that I really began to encounter real life in a much wider cultural setting. But as Paul Pena wrote and Steve Miller sang in BIG OLD JET AIRLINER – "you know you gotta go through hell before you get to heaven"

And while this certainly isn’t heaven, living in Crewe was certainly hell

Saturday 24th June 2023 – I’VE DONE SOMETHING …

… today that I haven’t done in an absolute age.

Or, more to the point, I haven’t done something, the first time for an age, that I would usually do.

And that is that I haven’t been to the shops today. In fact, I’ve not even et foot out of the apartment.

After I’d had my medication and checked my mails and messages I did a quick lap around the kitchen to see what I needed today. I came up with bananas, pears, and that was about that.

As regular readers of this rubbish will recall, I’m not feeling myself right now, which is just as well, so there’s no point exerting myself for no good reason. Consequently I decided that I would stay in.

What was strange about that though was that for the first time for a while I’d had a decent sleep. Not a great deal of stuff on the dictaphone so I transcribed it in no time at all. There was a famous actor on board a ship last night, someone like Long John Baldry or like that. He was recounting his adventures on board this ship in some rather graphic detail. There was a lesson to be given over the ship’s radio so he went off to gather together his things to prepare for this lesson in his cabin. I was preparing for it too because I was planning on taking it but I awoke before it actually started off.

One of my old bosses was living in a retirement home in Alsager somewhere later on. He’d ordered a huge supply of American TVs because you could still receive some of the pay-for-view programmes for free on them. They slung them in the back of my red Cortina estate and I had to take them. I didn’t know exactly where I was going but I knew that a woman with whom I used to work lived there so I went to see her. She was in the middle of entertaining some neighbours but she managed to get rid of them. In the end she pointed out the retirement community where the guy lived with his wife. I went round there and eventually managed to find my way in. Some young girl on crutches pointed me to a member of staff. They did all of the enquiries and came back out with a guy with whom I used to work. We had a good chat about everything, what we’d been doing in the past. Then we went to unload the car. The car was miles away from this Old People’s Home, I’ve no idea why it was so far away. He asked me all kinds of questions so I told him about the paperwork and the way that you can claim Income Tax relief on these purchases etc. It was anextremely complicated discussion. In the end we came to where my car was. He began to help me to unload it into a day-by-day set of equipment. He told me that he’d have them sent up and installed. It wasn’t until I was driving away that I was wondering whether these were actually on the American electricity system or the European one in which case they’ll all need resetting. I didn’t think about that, although I’m i’m impressed that I could think about it even in a dream, and by now it was far too late because the guy had taken away all the TVs and gone

There was no bread for my mid-morning cheese on toast, but that’s not a problem when I have some flour, some yeast and an air fryer. Just a simple bit of bread thrown together and it worked well enough, only I mustn’t cook the next one so long, and I must also remember to turn it over halfway through.

But that’s why we have an air fryer – it’s all trial and error and hit and miss and if you don’t make mistakes how are you supposed to learn from them?

The rest of the day has been spent wading through a pile of directories going through, sorting out duplicates, deleting or discarding half the stuff that I found and all that kind of thing. I’ve no idea how many GB of memory I’ve freed up today but it’s certainly ding its job.

All of the operating system and the program files are (or will be by the time that you read this) on the 1TB SSD and if you aren’t into solid state hard drive I recommend that you have a go. Loading up is lightning-fast and saving is instant instead of the usual couple of second pause.

All of the active data files are on a 4TB hard drive that’s in the casing and there’s room for another one, which I’ll be installing in early course and which I’ll use for images.

Then there’s the array of several hard drives that I use for all kinds of back-ups and that works quite well. So let’s have three cheers for that … “hip hip array!” – ed.

Tea tonight was a few nuggets of breadcrumbed soya that I bought weeks ago from Noz. A good buy that. I had some salad with it and the last of some very sorry-looking potatoes that I diced and cooked in the air fryer.

But I’ve had a bad attack of nostalgia again today. When I was photographing the music festival in Fredericton back in 2014 I came across a group that IMPRESSED ME VERY, VERY MUCH.

When Liz and I were running Radio Anglais back in the old days I used to receive press releases from the Festival and they would send me every year a CD with a track from each of the groups that would be playing there that year, so I’d know who to look out for.

Anyway, around on the playlist tonight came THIS SONG. It’s one of the most beautiful songs that I’ve heard for years and always comes round on the playlist when I’m feeling really depressed and all it does is just heave me deeper into the pit

I remember singing it to someone a few years ago when it really was “a cold one” that particular night at about 02:30 in Coronation Gulf. It just reminds me too much of Canada and the High Arctic and all of that that went with it.

It’s almost 4 years to the day that I set out to cross the Atlantic by sea The artist Samuel Gurney Cresswell said “a voyage to the High Arctic ought to make anyone a wiser and better man” but it didn’t work for me.

To quote from the songI TOTALLED MY LIFE
SO I’M GONNA FIND SOMETHING ELSE TO DO
‘CAUSE IF I EVER WAS SAY TO YOU
ALL OF THE THINGS THAT YOU WANTED ME TO
I’D HAVE TO FIND SOMETHING ELSE TO DO,

So Mother Mary won’t you come sing a song for me
And make it last all damn night
‘Cause you know I can’t hang on to see
When this noose pulls me so tight

Saturday 17th April 2021 – REGULAR READERS …

… of this rubbish will recall that we have watched fisherman after fisherman standing on the rocks, or in boats, or on the beach, day after day after week after week and never ever catching anything at all.

And here we are today, watching a fisherman with a fish in his hand, and what is he doing except throwing it back into the sea. The first one that we’ve ever seen caught around here.

Mind you, this is a bit of a cheat. It looks as if he’s had a fishing net out on the beach while the tide has been in and while it’s on its way out, he’s gone out there to retrieve his catch. But as for why he would want to thrown one of his catch back into the sea is totally beyond me. I don’t understand this at all.

That’s not the only thing that’s been puzzling me this afternoon. We’ve had another one of these aerial afternoons today, with an endless stream of aircraft going by overhead.

Not any big stuff unfortunately – that is to say, nothing that I could see, and that is no surprise given the thick 10/10ths clouds that we’ve had today. We probably couldn’t see a thing about two or three thousand feet. Instead we’ve had a procession of all kinds of light aircraft going past me while I was on my afternoon walk.

This is just one of the machines that flew by me. It’s a helicopter of course but it’s of a type that I don’t immediately recognise with its twin outriggers at the rear. The make will probably occur to me once I’ve pressed “send” and published these notes, as this sort of thing usually does.

This morning I was up with the lark and the first alarm yet again, and then after my medication I had a listen to the dictaphone to find out where I’d been during the night. I had actually been in Vienna. It was something to do with the cathedral. It was a huge place and there were all kinds of things happening to it so they had set up a team to keep watch on there. Some of the watching was discreet and some of the watching was public. There was a theatre there and a couple of people who were involved in this, at the end of the night when everyone had gone would audition acts who would act out in the theatre. There would be actors, dancers, that kind of thing and I’m often stay up at night and watch. I really couldn’t tell the difference between a good actor and a bad actor from the standard at which they were dealing because they weren’t dealing with the ordinary run-of-the-mill stuff and some of the acerbic comments that they were making about some people I didn’t understand at all because it was way over my head. But it was extremely interesting. The cathedral authorities were receiving notes or finding notes such as “what about the damage to such-and-such cathedral over 11 years that went un-noticed and they were spending all of their time examining what was happening here?” These were generally dismissed as being to work of ineffective or weak people whereas some notes they were taking far more seriously because of the style in which they had been written. This dream went on for ages and ages and there was much more to it than this. I just wish that I could remember it all.

First task this morning after the dictaphone was to deal with the photos from August 2019. And I’ve found to my dismay that I’ve made a rather serious error. While I was in North America I visited the site of Fort CF Smith in Montana and although the remains have been described as “difficult to see”, I couldn’t see them at all.

With everything that I’ve been through, I would have thought that I would have been able to discern something so I was disappointed.

But examining a few aerial and satellite photographs I’ve discovered that the Lady Who Lives In The Satellite has some how made an error of about 200 metres because while the GPS co-ordinates on the Satnav gave me one reading, the same co-ordinates typed into a satellite viewer come up with a place on the other side of the road.

And to make things even worse, from the satellite, the outline of the fort is clearer than anything similar that I have ever seen.

Ahh well. You can’t win a coconut every time. I shall just have to go back there again.

There was a break in the middle of all of this for a shower, and then later on I went for my hot chocolate and sourdough fruit bread. No shopping today as I’m off on my travels on Wednesday at … gulp … 05:55.

There have been a few things that I needed to do this morning too. Like emptying out the mailbox, claiming a refund for my delayed train the other week before the time period runs out, and then trying to make a recalcitrant shipping company reply to a message that I’ve sent them four times now.

After lunch I came back in here to carry on with some work but unfortunately I crashed out yet again. I was away for over an hour as well and I’m not very happy about that. But at least I’ve managed to catch up with some outstanding work that I’ve been meaning to do, and that’s another task completed.

There was a break for my afternoon walk of course and so I went out with the NIKON D500 and peered over the wall at the end of the car park to see what was going on down on the beach.

This afternoon I wasn’t expecting to see very much because the weather was totally depressing. Dark, overcast and miserable. There were a few people walking around down there but not too many actually making themselves comfortable.

The members of the little group in this photograph were just about the only people standing around, although I suspect that they were more interested in the little kiddy that was running around

And of course, there was the fisherman with his net …

Nothing else was going on around here and I had the footpath on the top of the cliffs to myself

Le Loup, the light on the rock at the entrance to the harbour, was swathed in darkness today in the miserable weather.

So much so that in fact I was surprised to note that it wasn’t illuminated, especially as the tide was well out today and the rock was exposed. There was a fisherman around there too, in his rubber boat, having a go at the sea bass and being singularly unsuccessful.

There wasn’t anything else going on out there this afternoon. For a change, there were no fishing boats in the Baie de Mont St Michel either. They must be having the weekend off.

So in the absence of anything else exciting, I carried on along the path and across the main road where a Mercedes actually stopped to let me cross. Wonders will never cease.

The yellow fishing boat was down there in the chantier navale and once again the ladder was propped up against the hull so I couldn’t see the name on it.

With nothing better to do, I went for a walk down there for a closer look and I can now tell you that she’s called Cherie d’Amour. She’s up there on her chocks and blocks, but I couldn’t actually see any signs of work that was being undertaken on her.

They aren’t very big, these fishing boats. But all they do is to go back and to to the shellfish beds and lay the odd lobster pot. And as I’ve said before … “and on many occasions too” – ed … they have a cover over the boat to stop the seabirds diving down to steal the catch.

While I was down there, I took the opportunity to have a look at the other more longer-term occupants of the Chantier Navale, like Aztec Lady over there.

She’s actually the longest inhabitant of the Chantier Navale and she’s been there longer than I can remember, and longer than I ever thought she would when she first arrived here all that time ago.

And despite all of the time that she’s been in here, she looks as if she has a long way to go yet. Her hull is looking rather shabby and in need of a coat of paint. I would have thought that they would have given the paintwork a good going over to freshen her up while she’s been here.

The other boat that has been in here for a good length of time is this one, Anakena.

And seen from this angle, out of the water and up on blocks, you can see that she’s a very serious piece of kit, well beyond what you’d expect to see in a port like this. The carrying capacity of the portable boat lift is 95 tonnes and I bet that she’s pretty near the maximum.

What I do know is that she’s 23 metres long and 5 metres wide and she would have been the kind of boat that I would have considered for a trip up to the far North except that she’s only single-hulled.

Nothing else of any note in the Chantier Navale so I wandered off back towards the apartment.

Halfway home, I started to encounter the aerial flotilla that I mentioned earlier.

This particular one is a Piper PA-28R-200, serial number F-BRNQ. I’ve no idea where she had come from but she was picked up on the radar just to the west of Chartres. She then disappeared off the radar somewhere to the south-west of St Hilaire du Harcouet about 15 minutes before I saw her.

Apparently she had taken off from Lognes at the south-east of Paris at 14:47 and landed at Granville at 16:22. And at 17:18 the took off again and flew back to Lognes. She spends a lot of time at Lognes, so it seems, so it’s a fair bet that Lognes is her home airfield.

We saw the helicopter earlier on. That was the next thing to fly past, but then it was followed by this machine.

This is a type of machine that I’ve seen before. I recognise the shape, but it’s another thing to which I cannot put a name. It’s something else that I’ll probably discover quite soon after I’ve posted this on-line.

But I really don’t understand why it is that there would be so many aircraft, one after the other, flying past over my head this afternoon as I was walking home for my hot coffee. It did make me wonder what I’d be encountering next before I reached my own front door.

And it goes without saying that after all of this I was going to encounter something unusual before my journey finished.

This machine roared past me as I crossed over the Rue des Juifs and at first glance I thought that it might have been the Holy Grail of road vehicles – a V-twin three-wheeler Morgan. That’s probably what it might be, although it’s not what I was hoping for. A lose look at the engine and the front of the chassis shows that it’s a modern reproduction.

What I was hoping to see was a 3-wheeler Morgan from the 1920s and 30s fitted with the old V-twin JAP engine, something that I would sell my soul to own if ever one became available. But I doubt whether one will ever come up for sale in the near future.

Back here there was football. TNS v Penybont on the internet. As expected, TNS ran out winners 1-0, but they were made to work hard for it.

Penybont defended really well but like most Welsh Premier League clubs, were devoid of very much firepower. Sam Snaith is the one player whom they have who can pull something out of nothing but taking him off the field after an hour because he hasn’t doe anything much as yet and replacing him with a player who doesn’t have the same flashes of inspiration and who needs much more service was a tactic that was never going to pay off.

And that’s a surprise considering that Penybont’s manager Rhys Griffiths was one of the greatest strikers that the WPL has ever produced.

While I was doing that I was copying the CDs that I had received from the Harvest Jazz and Blues Festival. I’m going to be doing a radio programme in the near future that features music from the Festivals.

Tea was out of a tin tonight, followed by one of the desserts that I made the other day. And now I’ve done my notes, I’m off to bed and hopefully having a lie-in tomorrow. And about time too. I’m ready for this.

Friday 26th March 2021 – THE LAST THING …

… that i was expecting to be doing today s going back to the hospital.

So while you are admiring the photo of a furniture removal with a Belgian furniture lift the Monseigneur van Waeyenberghlaan, I was busy answering a telephone call.

And at 08:30 too – nothing like the early bird catching the worm, hey?

Believe it or not, they actually awoke me too because with no alarm this morning I was flat out in bed fast asleep. A really deep sleep too – that thing that they gave me for my cramps seemed to have worked because I didn’t awaken once during the night, not even for 10 seconds.

Nothing on the dictaphone to say if I had been anywhere during the night. However I did have this weird feeling that TOTGA came to visit me during the night. She told me that she had changed her address and was living somewhere else. That took me completely by surprise because I couldn’t imagine her going to live anywhere else without taking her daughter with her.

While I’ve been here today I’ve selected the music for four radio programmes for the future and I’ve paired the music for three of them.

One thing that’s important though is that I must remember to keep a free week in the middle of September.

That’s the weekend of the Harvest Jazz and Blues Festival and while I was back home last July I found all of the promotion disks for the three years that I did the photography for the festival.

Those disks contain samples of the music of the groups who played there for those years so I am planning on making my own Harvest Jazz and Blues Festival on the radio for that week.

After lunch I went out and hit the streets, in the direction of the hospital. But not the hospital itself but the pharmacy at the side. They had made a mistake with the dispensing yesterday and given me the wrong medicine. I had to take back what they had given me and collect the correct medicine.

Just for a change I went a different way towards the hospital, right down the Brusselsestraat.

There had been a sign saying “road closed -diversion” that I’d noticed yesterday so I was interested to see what was going on there. And sure enough, they have the road all dug up around here too.

These road works all around the town are causing chaos and I remembered Alison telling me yesterday that she had been held up by roadworks on her way into town to meet me.

From the roundabout in the Brusselsestraat I cut down the Goudsbloemstraat towards the junction between the St Hubertusstraat and the Monseigneur van Waeyenberghlaan.

This is where the roadworks have been going on for as long as I can remember. We’ve seen plenty of photographs of these roadworks including a couple from yesterday, but we have never seen them from this angle before.

The cyclists had a bit of a struggle to pass through the roadworks, and the clouds of dust being generated by the guy with the concrete cutter cutting the kerbstones didn’t help matters much. I’m glad that I was wearing my facemask.

A little earlier we’d seen a photo of a furniture removal being undertaken in the Monseigneur van Waeyenberghlaan.

Because of all of the apartments in Belgium, every furniture removal company has a furniture removal lift and they always excite the attention of people from other countries who probably haven’t seen them before.

You can also see how they are advancing with the street repairs here. The people on the pavement to the left, and the cycle track that they are building at the side. The cobbles are where people will be permitted to park their cars and then of course the roadway in the centre of the photograph – whenever it will be completed.

They were cracking on with that pipe that they had started yesterday.

There was a big pile of pipes around where they were working yesterday and they have now laid a line almost as far as the ring road. Maybe the digger is for digging the trench into which they will eventually drop the pipework.

At the pharmacy I handed back the medication that they had given me yesterday and took the correct medicines and walked back down to the centre of the town.

The ice cream stall was open so I treated myself to the first one of the year. It wasn’t all that warm outside today but I had certainly felt the strain of the walk. My knee isn’t hurting as badly as it did on Wednesday but occasionally there is a twinge just to remind me that it isn’t all that happy.

In the past I have spent a lot of time talking about birds and birdwatching.

The usual place to sit and carry out some birdwatching is close to a tree and to watch them as they start to build their nest. And here today in the Sint Donatuspark we find half a dozen birds busily making a nest in a tree.

And these are much more like the species of bird that I am interested in watching. And I’m very knowledgeable on this subject, having had many lectures on the subject of birdwatching in the past, mainly from Nerina.

The Sint Donatuspark is one of my favourite spots in Leuven.

It’s roughly the site of part of the old medieval walls and the vacant space in front of and behind. We can see one of the towers here that formed part of the city defences back in those days.

The park is very popular as a place to hang out and there us always a crowd of students relaxing in here. Regular readers of this rubbish will in fact recall that Alison and I came for a walk through here late in the evening last time I was here and there was quite a crowd of people in here partying

In the background over on the right is the stage where they have occasional outdoor performances. And I particularly like the whale painted on the wall on the back.

On the way back I went past the house that they have been rebuilding in the Dekenstraat for the last however long.

It seems that they are almost on the point of completion after all this time and it won’t be long before they move away the security fencing.

Back here I carried on with my radio work until it was time to stop for tea. Pasta and veg with a nut burger, and it was all delicious.

Having finished now my notes I’m going to do my packing and then I’ll do the washing up and then I’m off to bed. I have a very early start in the morning and I do hope that all of the trains will be running on time. There’s a football match on the internet at 15:30 and I don’t want to miss it.

Friday 21st June 2019 – YET ANOTHER …

… day where I’ve not been able to do anything like as much as I would have liked.

I had an exciting night though. And what a night it was! I started off in the Free French infantry or Resistance or something, trying to track down something that had gone on at a certain crossroads. I’d been out there in Caliburn a few times but I’d never managed to see the mayor or never managed to find out very much about any of this. So there I was on a Saturday morning, there was a train at 08:58. It was 08:48 and I was just getting to the station. I had all these plans to go to see whatever it was at these crossroads. I had to walk on foot from the station at the other end, hope that the mayor would be in on a Saturday morning and I could get some answers and have a physical visit of the spot. I felt that it was going to be a really long walk for me at all.

Later on, I was on the Ocean Endeavour talking to some people about the possibility of hiring it. We discussed the ship – that it was old and not luxurious and needed one or two little things to make it better like a coat of paint and de-rusting, things like that. They were saying that it was free on December and January and how to get in touch. Here’s the number – it’s this company here on the internet that you need to contact. They asked what I had in mind for it, but I didn’t want to tell them because what I had in mind was something that they might not like – it’s up to the people who wanted to hire it to negotiate. This company who owned it looked extremely interesting because they owned all kinds of car ferries, with routes going across the South Atlantic and South Pacific, car ferries. And if that’s the case I was hoping to get down there with Caliburn and see where we could all go.

And later on yet, I was out with a patrol of cowboys kind of people and we were hunting down some Indians. We came across where these were and they threatened to attack us. So we dug ourselves into firepits or trenches. There was one guy there who wouldn’t dig himself in. he was the officer of the troop we had come out to relieve. His excuse was that he had no shovel so someone gave him one, a short blue one, but he wouldn’t dig, coming out with something else, clearly not interested in digging, wanting someone else to dig it for him I imagine. We were quickly in these firepits and disporting ourselves around, a case of who was going to defend what, who would fire at what? What happened if they got in behind us? But that wasn’t too much of a problem because there was a little cave facing behind us and in there they had secreted a guy with a Maxim gun so if they came behind us he could take care of them and the noise of the Maxim would alert us.

There was much more too, including a trip to the library somewhere along the line.

All of this led to a rather late start. I’d heard the alarms go off but it was more like 06:45 when I crawled out of bed.

After breakfast I had a go at transcribing the dictaphone notes – the stuff from last night and then some stuff out of the backlog. And the backlog is now down to just 34. Doing 7 per day will give me just enough time before I leave, although I’ll be pushed to do that, as I will explain in due course.

Some of these files were quite large and what with various interruptions that took me right up until lunchtime, which was taken indoors because as I was making my sandwiches, they all fell apart and I ended up with a mixed salad.

This afternoon was a paper-chase looking for all of the bits and pieces relating to my medical examinations, and then I set out.

Firstly to the estate agent’s to give them a copy of my insurance certificate and to check that I was up-to-date with everything before I leave (I am).

Next was the railway station to check train times because I’ve had some good news, to wit that I need to present myself at the Préfecture at St-Lô on Tuesday morning between 08:30 and 12:00.

That means a train at … gulp … 06:57, something to which I am not looking forward at all.

Then to the laboratory for all of my test results. I’ve no idea what they might mean, so I telephoned the doctor and arranged an appointment for Monday at 08:45 to have them interpreted.

I’ve no idea what the outcome would be, but if it requires any action after Wednesday it will be rather a shame, won’t it?

Back into town and the library book sale. No books that interested me unfortunately, but there was a copy of Humble Pie’s “Live at the Whisky a-Go-Go” for just €2:50. A magnificent live album including a 21:25 version of “I Walk On Gilded Splinters”.

Seeing as how beautiful it was today, I treated myself to a sorbet while I was out – a coconut and mint one. I felt that I deserved it.

Rosemary rang me up when I returned and we had a lengthy chat that took me right up to tea-time. A vegan burger on a bap with oven chips and the rest of the baked beans from the other day.

Later on, when it was going dark, I went out for a walk.

It’s the musical evening tonight with groups set up all over the town in various corners.

I made a few interesting discoveries – a bassist playing with a very rare acoustic dobro bass, and another bassist playing with a Rickenbacker 4003.

In the darkening evening I had a good wander round, experimenting with the low ISO settings on the new camera.

It’s not too bad down to about ISO51200 but beyond there the quality drops off quite rapidly. At H2.0 it’s unusable.

But it’s been a long time since I’ve been able to take photos at 1/640 in the dark with a 18/300 zoom lens. I’m itching to get out and about with the 50mm f1.8 lens in the dark.

When I went back to see the group with the Rickenbacker, they were just finishing, which was rather a disappointment because I was intending to stick out and hear the rest of the set.

But I did manage to have a chat with the guy with the Rickenbacker. He was quite sociable, unlike the last Rickenbacker player who I had met at the Harvest Jazz and Blues Festival in Fredericton, New Brunswick.

They are still making them apparently, but I don’t imagine that they would be as good as those of the 1960s.

So despite wanting a early night, I was editing the photos until i don’t know what time. That’s going to set me up for a good day tomorrow, isn’t it?

Saturday 14th April 2018 – I HAD A REALLY …

… nice day out today, and when I finish editing the photos (because there are more than just a few) I’ll be posting them up on here so that you can see what I mean.

We started off by having had a really good sleep for once, although there wasn’t that much of it with having not gone to bed until about 01:30. And that rather set the scene for the day, I’m afraid.

But I was still up early enough, had the usual morning ritual and followed all of that with a shower and a scrub of the undies. The heater in this room has a coat-hanger above it and so anything that I wash will dry in half a day and I need to take full advantage while I’m on the road.

There was plenty to do (like catch up with last night’s blog entry and go in search of some toilet paper) until Alison came on line and told me that she was leaving home, and at the appropriate moment I wandered down to the end of the street to meet her.

Just for a change it was the E40 that we fahrn’d fahrn’d farn’d down nd crossed into Germany there, leaving the autobahn at the next exit and heading, not north to Aachen, but southwards.

Despite having issues with the SatNav, that had different ideas that I had about where we needed to go, we eventually found our destination – Auf Aderich 33, 52156 Monschau. And hereby hangs a tail.

The Dukes of Brabant controlled several small German-speaking Provinces around Eupen and Malmédy which had been incorporated into the Austrian Netherlands. But after the territorial reorganisations following the Napoleonic Wars, their Germanic heritage meant that they were incorporated into the Kingdom of Prussia.

Following the end of World War I at the Treaty of Versailles these small territories were given to Belgium as part of the War reparations.

But there was a slight problem. Due to the mountainous relief of the country here, the only rail connection that these provinces had with the rest of Belgium was via Germany. And the solution was found – that the railway line itself, known as the Vennbahn – would be ceded to Belgium too.

This produced several anomalies, in that several parts of Germany were now isolated from Germany proper by the now-Belgian railway line and despite several subsequent territorial reorganisations, this left five “enclaves” (and, historically, one “counter-enclave”) still isolated from Germany and surrounded completely by Belgium.

The railway line is no longer in existence (it’s a cycle path) but the enclaves are. And these range from town-sized enclaves down in size to just one house and garden. And here we are at the smallest enclave of them all – Auf Aderich.

And this is what we came to see – the smallest of the German enclaves into Belgian territory.

From here we headed on down the hill into Monschau.

This is a very pretty old town situated along the banks of the River Rur as it flows through a cleft in the rocks. Being situated on a fast-flowing river near to a plateau noted for its sheep, the town was famous for its many mills and cloth-weaving.

Not unnaturally, it became quite a rich town and there are dozens, if not hundreds of magnificent buildings here, built of local stone or wattle-and-daub that leave no(one in any doubt about how rich the town was in those days.

In fact, it was so rich that it was regularly looted and pillaged by all kinds of different invading armies during the turbulent years of the second millennium.

We had a coffee and went for a good wander around. Alison, who had been here on many occasions, showed me the sights.

But none of these sights was as exciting as the second-hand shop in the town that had a “dobro” guitar – the acoustic guitar with a built-in resonance speaker that was very popular with blues musicians in the 1920s and still makes an appearance today (we’ve seen many at the Harvest Jazz and Blues Festival).

I would have bought it at a heartbeat, until I noticed “made in China” stamped on the neck. So it’s not an original 1920s guitar at all but a cheap Chinese import, of no interest really to me.

We ended up back in Aachen and our favourite restaurant for a meal and a wander around – not to mention a visit to the Muller supermarket where they sell that beautiful white vegan chocolate with coconut flakes.

By the time we returned home it was too late to go to the football, which was probably just as well because I was exhausted. I sat here and vegetated for a while and then went for a walk around the block.

And then, an early night. A good sleep will do me good as I’m moving on tomorrow. Man In A Suitcase is hitting the road.

Sunday 20th September 2015 – YOU MAY REMEMBER …

… the other day when I told you that I thought that it had rained during the night?

Well, there was absolutely no mistake this morning. There I was, busily taking down the tent, and the heavens opened. I was drenched.

I was intending to leave the tent out to dry out the condensation but I’ve had to forget that. It’ll be soaked even worse and so I just flung it into the back of Strider.

I had almost 200 photographs to edit too, and that wasn’t possible as I had nowhere to sit comfortably. I went off to the shower room and had a really good soak, changed my undies, and had a shave instead. No breakfast though – I heaved everything else into the back of Strider and headed off to Tim Horton’s for coffee and a comfortable seat.

All of these photos took hours to edit. My camera, which has been quite flaky since I dropped it in Quebec in May 2012, is now teetering on the edge of whatever it teeters on and the photos are getting worse and worse. A new camera is in order when I return home if I can’t find anything over here. I can’t go on like this. But I do need a really decent lens – something like a 28-85mm lens that drops down to f2.8 or beyond for this kind of work. I can’t keep going on the equipment that I have.

But the net result of this was that I had to move on. Not that I actually had to, but Tim Horton’s is very good to me when I’m on the road, what with washing facilities in the disabled loos and with the free internet, so I don’t want to abuse the facilities.

I found another Tim Hortons quite a way down the road and so I had another coffee and finished everything off, and that took me to 17:30, there was that much of it to do. And what I hadn’t realised was that when I finished, I was the only person in the place except for the staff who were hanging around waiting. It seems that the place was to close at 17:00 so that renovations could start, and I’d been holding up the work.

I hit the road after that, and Strider and I ended up on the big Irvings truckstop on the outskirts of Moncton. Tonight is the first night that I am to spend sleeping in Strider and so I needed to organise myself.

It took ages to clear everything out and I even cooked some simple food for tea. And that little table that I bought the other day is perfect for that. I did however spill all of my pasta all over the floor and that will need all cleaning out now.

The bed is just the right length and it’s reasonably comfortable too although I want to do better. But the truckstop is the wrong place for me to have spent the night – at least where I was. Lorries were coming and going throughout the night and it took me ages to get off to sleep.

I must do better tomorrow.

Saturday 19th September 2015 – SOMEONE IS ON A POWER TRIP …

… and, just for a change, I’m not talking about the farces of Law and Order either.
What we have here is a “suspicious package” in the middle of the festival, and everywhere is cordoned off by the police.

But what we do have is two of the Festival volunteers, pushing (and I DO mean pushing) people out of the way, yelling at everyone, and generally being on a major control freak exercise. I asked them what was going on and they told me that it’s “a police incident”. And so when I asked what kind of “incident” I was told that it was nothing to do with me.

And when I asked them how come, as festival employees, they were dealing with a “police incident”, they walked away. And so when I asked them if I could ask another question, one of them replied “yes, I DO mind. I’m not answering”, and carried on walking away.

And so I went 20 yards further on to a police officer, who made a full and complete statement without any inhibitions, even telling me that “no-one is taking it very seriously but we have to check it out just the same”.

But this kind of behaviour by festival employees, assaulting members of the public (because pushing someone is an assault of course and had it been me on the receiving end of it then the matter would not have rested there), being aggressive and abandoning their festival duties in order to go on a major power trip is something that is inevitably going to have repercussions as far as the festival is concerned.

And not only that, on the main street I counted at least two other “acts” that included backing tapes. Whatever is the festival coming to, that it is abandoning the principles under which it was founded?

If you are a solo performer and need more than just a guitar, then this is exactly how you do it.

This is a guy from Montreal called Steve Hill and he’s playing guitar and singing. And not only that, if you have a closer look at the photo you’ll see that he has a bass drum, another drum, a hi-hat, a tambourine and a set of cymbals, that he plays by hitting them with some kind of extension fastened to his guitar.

He had another guitar too, and that had a maracca attached to the end as well so he could shake his maraccas during the performance.

I was amazed to see that he didn’t have a mouth-truss and a gob-iron, which was what I would have expected to see in a solo performer, and I did have a little muse to myself that had he had a really good plate of baked beans for lunch he could have played the trumpet too.

But I’m a big fan of one-man shows and I have appeared in several, but these were usually named after the size of the audience.

But joking apart, I do have to say that I really enjoyed his performance. He was certainly a very competent performer and he had quite a good voice too.

This is what being a solo performer is all about. Using backing tapes and the like is selling the public, and the festival, short.

Talking of mouth trusses and gob-irons, this is what I mean.

This is a guy called Oland Monteith and he comes from up the road in Nackawic, and he is an excellent representation of what the festival is all about – the old man sitting on the porch with the guitar and mouth organ singing the blues – in this case the Folsom Prison Blues.

You might – or might not – have realised this, but this is the FIRST real old-man blues act that we have seen at the festival. And by the time that the festival had finished, this was the only one that I had encountered.

What a let-down from the days when I first came to the festival and we had raft after raft of old men singing the blues. Of course, I’ve not had the blues for years – ever since I started on the Prozac of course.

As for other unusual acts, how about this one?

This is the North Mississippi Allstars and if you look very carefully at the stage and the musicians, you will notice that they have one singer-guitarist and two drummers.

And that’s your lot.

You might think that the sound that they would be able to create would be rather limited, but nothing could be further from the truth.

They managed to put in a “complete” performance that certainly sounded as if there was nothing missing from the show, and it all went down rather well. Much better than I had expected.

And with all of the above, just WHY do you need backing tapes? And just WHY are you allowed to get away with it at the festival?

And so this morning I was up quite nice and early and had plenty of time to have breakfast and do the paperwork from yesterday without any interruptions.

But I did have an interruption while I was driving into town. However, this was something of a quite welcome interruption. You may remember that I’d sent a note backstage to Ross Neilsen during his performance yesterday, And this was him, ringing me back.

We had quite a lengthy chat, and the result of this is that he will indeed do something for Radio Anglais and that can only be good news. If what he sends me is as powerful as what he performed yesterday then our listeners really will enjoy themselves.

That’s not all either. At a Charity Shop, Strawberry Moose made a few new friends – a couple of girls aged about 8 or 9 were very keen to make his acquaintance while I was having a long chat with their mother.

And so to the music.

We’ve already seen a couple of acts, right out of running order. The first band that we actually encountered, in strict running order, was Greensky Bluegrass. They come from that well-known haunt of legendary bluegrass music … errr … Minnesota.

Bluegrass is a long way from being my favourite style of music as you all very well know, but good music is good music, no matter what it is and where it comes from.

But this bluegrass music was so astonishingly good that I doubt if I’ve ever in all my life had a better time at this kind of concert

We media-types are only allowed to be there for the first three numbers but I was there for probably three quarters of an hour because one of their numbers seemed to go on for ever.

Not that I minded, of course. I could have stayed there all night and listened to them, if I hadn’t had so many other things to be dealing with.

There were five musicians on stage – and no drummer, which they didn’t need anyway because the guy on the upright bass was a stunning performer who kept perfect time.

They aren’t really suitable for a performance on Radio Anglais unfortunately, but I’ll be checking them out when I return home to see what else they can come up with.

On my way to my next venue I passed by the Barracks Tent. There was no performance scheduled for there, but there was certainly something going on.

One of the benefits of my media pass is to be able to enter venues when they are officially closed, and so I went in to investigate, and found myself face-to-face with Yukon Blonde doing a sound check.

Yukon blonde’s bassist, as well as being a left-hooker, comes from the UK, which was evident when he shouted across the stage “there’s something the ma”er with your speaker” – not a trace of a ‘t’ between two vowels. I hope that he doesn’t sing like this.

But that apart, they were quite a good group too.

I doubted very much that I would be around for their act, seeing as it was timed for 23:00, long after my bed-time, and so I stayed around for the entire sound check.

And it wasn’t a wasted experience either because, as I said, they put out quite a good performance even if it was only a simple sound-check. A shame that their set wasn’t timed for earlier.

Down at the Mojo Tent, Raoul and the Big Time were due to come on stage and so I needed to get a move on if I wanted to catch the act.

This looked like something out of the 1950s, what with the shiny grey suit and pork-pie hat, and this was indeed what we got. Appearances were certainly not deceptive in this case.

Despite the presence of the mouth organ, this was another very good, competent performance.

It seems that Raoul, whoever he is, is something of a well-known performer on the music stage although I have to admit to never having heard him before. And to be honest, it wasn’t my cup of tea and so I wandered off elsewhere.

“Elsewhere” turned out to be tea. There was quite a big gap between the next performances and so I went off to find some food.

We’re overwhelmed by food stalls this year and vegan food is quite popular. Tonight I had 6 hot-vegetable samosas, for $7:00 – and they were totally delicious – and very filling too. I’m doing well for food at the festival and, to my surprise, it’s not as expensive as it might have been.

My wanderings took me back at the Mojo Tent (we’ve seen the photos of Steve Hill in the Blues Tent earlier) where Amy Helm and the Handsome Strangers was the next act.

Now let’s forget the music for a moment – let’s talk about Amy Helm, because she was well-worth talking about. She’s someone else of whom I hadn’t heard before, and so I went off to make enquiries.

It turns out that she’s the daughter of Levon Helm who for many years was a member of the band “The Hawks”, which later became “The Band” and backed Bob Dylan during his “rock” phases and went on to have successes of their own.

This was another act that wasn’t really up my street as far as the music went, but there was no doubting the quality of the music, and no doubting the quality of the performance either, because Amy Helm really knew how to put on a show.

She was an entertainer from start to finish and not only that, she clearly had the air of thoroughly enjoying herself on stage.

At the Barracks Tent, I went to see a band called Rah Rah, who come from Saskatchewan apparently.

They were a five-piece band featuring a guitarist-vocalist, a bassist, a violinist, a drummer and a keyboard player who doubled on guitar too, and they produced quite a powerful act that I enjoyed very much.

The sound mix was all wrong however and I couldn’t hear half of the instruments, although that’s not surprising for us in the media pit at the front of the stage.

I was disappointed not to be able to hear the violin though, and I shall have to go around for a fiddle with the violinist later.

Final act that I caught was back at the Mojo Tent where Waylon Thibodeaux took to the stage.

He’s a ‘cajun from down Louisiana way, and he and his back-up band played just like it too. It didn’t bother me too much because this kind of music is the kind that you can listen to anywhere on any occasion

And if it’s played in the right kind of spirit with performers who enjoy what they are doing and are able to communicate with the audience, it’s usually a rip-roaring night.

And so this was what we got – a thoroughly enjoyable evening with a good bunch of performers and a lively crowd.

But I didn’t hang around too long. It’s my last night and I want to have an early night as I’m back on the road tomorrow. But today, I had a pile of interesting chats, including one with a cameraman from CBC and another with a young guy at the Rah Rah concert, to name but two.

It makes the time pass so much quicker and make things so much more interesting.

But I’m disappointed to see that the traditional “old-man blues” is no longer popular at the festival. For me, that’s what blues is all about and to legislate it out of the festival is a very sad thing as far as I am concerned.

And by the way …

… the photos that I’ve posted for tonight’s acts at the Harvest Jazz and Blues Festival are only a small sample of the hundreds that I took during the evening. If you want to see any more of those that I took, you’ll need to contact me. Leave a comment and I’ll be in touch.

-2

Friday 18th September 2015 – I KNEW THAT …

… I couldn’t keep it up.

We had twice the amount of usual interruptions today, to make up for the smooth day that we had yesterday.

I’m not counting the rain in this because although this morning there was no sign of any precipitation whatsoever, I’m convinced that I heard some rain during the night.

Mind you, that’s all that I heard. I had another Sleep Of The Dead and didn’t feel a thing.

And so next morning I started on the building of my bed for Strider. This meant that I had to completely unload him so that I could measure up. and with stuff all over my camping pitch, another camper pulled up on the pitch beside mine. He came over to see what he was doing, and his dog promptly went to urinate on my camping pitch. And so the dog had my boot up its backside and his owner would have received one too had he not beaten a hasty retreat, with my opinion of him and his dog ringing in his ears.

While all of this was going on, a camp site steward came up. I can’t stay at this pitch, apparently, as it’s been booked for the weekend. I have to move.
“But you should have come to the office and booked in. After all, you’ve been here a few days”
“Every time I’ve been past the office I’ve seen the ‘sorry – we’re closed’ sign in the window”
“But I come on duty at 12:00”
“And I’ve been gone by then”
“But you do need to register”
“How?”
“One of the campground rangers should have come to see you and given you the details”
“And did they?”
“… errr … no”
“And as you know that I’ve been here for a few days, have you pinned a note on my tent to tell me what’s happening?”
“… errr … no”.

But in the end I had to move and I’m now elsewhere, and my bed isn’t finished either. All of this just goes to prove what I’ve always said about most Government servants. They only work when they have too and when it suits them. Providing an efficient and effective service to their clients is the last thing on their minds.

Some good news anyway concerns the group Tokyo Valentine – you remember that I saw them yesterday on one of the free stages. I was quite impressed with what I had seen of them and so I’d given my phone number to the guy who was doing their sound engineering.

The result of this was that Rachel, the keyboard player, rang me back and we had quite a lengthy chat. She likes the idea of recording one of the group’s live concerts so that I can make up a live broadcast for Radio Anglais. Plenty of interaction with the audience – that’s the thing, even if the have to summon up a clacque. I want to make my audience feel that they are part of the performance.

But as for the other acts to whom I’d slipped a little note – not a word. As I’ve said before, just like most people, musicians seem to be just interested in moaning about the lack of airplay that they receive and it’s far too much effort to actually go out and do something about it.

But before we start to involve ourselves in the festival tonight, let’s just say a word or two about the volunteers.

If you haven’t yet been to the festival, you won’t understand just how much work is done or needs to be done here and without the volunteers, none of this work would be done and the festival would ever take place. The volunteers deserve a big round of applause from everyone.

The first group that I encountered was on one of the free stages in the main street. This is Paula Tozer and Friends.

They were nothing special. Technically competent, they were, and playing an assortment of 12-bar blues including a number by JJ Cale that I hadn’t heard before but they didn’t manage to set the crowd alight.There wasn’t anything that I would have considered for broadcast on Radio Anglais.

As for the musicians, I recognised the lead guitarist. He’s called Rick Bartlett or something like that and I’m sure that I’ve seen him elsewhere at the festival in a previous year.

As for the bassist though, he gave me the opinion of being rather sour-faced. I went up to him as he was umpacking, and told him that it’s been years since I’ve seen a Rickenbacker bass, but he merely scowled and carried on unpacking, totally ignoring me.

And talking of totally ignoring me, I went into Tony’s Music Shop to see what they had – I’ve bought a few things from there in the past at various festivals.

This year though, I went in and all of the shop assistants were busy chatting away to various callers. Eventually, someone bade farewell to one of his visitors and came over to chat to me. And while we were chatting, another visitor came in and he turned to chat to them about babies and children, totally ignoring me.

That was enough for me and I walked out, with him running behind to try to persuade me to stay. But whatever happened to North American customer service? It used to be legendary, but now it’s all becoming just like Belgium. It’s shameful.

Talking of thigs being shameful, here’s Mike Peters, my favourite busker.

He’s been shunted out to play underneath the footbridge far from the madding crowd surging down the main street. He’s here playing to an audience of … errr … just me. And this is shameful treatment for someone such as him because he’s miles better than many of the performers who have appeared on a paid stage – never mind a free stage on the main street.

This is another thing that is shameful in my opinion.

The festival was created, so we were told, to counter the DJ movement and recorded music, and return to live entertainment and live music. But here, what we have is a “musician” strumming a guitar every now and again, backed by a recorded drummer, a recorded bass and a recorded backing choir. And it’s in the main street too.

But whatever is he doing with all of this gear at the festival, never mind on the main street, when many artists much better than him and playing all of their own music are stuck out at the back of the festival miles away from the crowds.

The first formal band that I encountered was the Earthbound Trio at the Barracks Tent. They were to play a little later on as one of the opening acts for Grand Theft Bus and so were warming up before the crowds filtered into to tent.

And yes, the Earthbound Trio is indeed the name, even though those of you who are able to count will have not failed to have noticed that there were four of them up on stage.

Musically, they were okay, I suppose, but this isn’t really my cup of tea and so I didn’t stay around very long.

But this is much more like my cup of tea.

Ross Neilsen is by far and away the best rock musician that you are ever likely to encounter anywhere in New Brunswick and, furthermore, he plays with the correct number of musicians too. Just a drummer and bassist – no horns, no keyboards, no nothing. This is a genuine power trio although his two backing musicians this year seem to be different than those who I’ve seen him play with in previous years.

Now if ony he would play like this all of the time, it would be a magnificent performance and he would be the star of any festival that I would organise.

He does however have a tendency to run a “blues by invitation” kind of show where he invites his friends up onto the stage to join in with the show. And while his friends are without doubt quite competent musicians, you have to hear the opening numbers of any show that Ross Neilsen puts on to hear how much of a disappointment the “augmented” show might become.

One of the things that I noticed about Ross Neilsen and his mates is that while Neilsen and his bassist weren’t ‘arf freaking out at the front of the stage, the drummer, whoever he was, was quite simply and stoically playing away on his drums totally oblivious of what was going on out at the front.

It was quite a remarkable exercise in concentration from the drummer, given the distractions.

And distractions they certainly were because Ross Neilsen and his mate were putting on quite a show and giving it all that they’ve got out there on the stage.

And as my three numbers were up (I’m only allowed to photograph the first three songs) I passed a note to backstage to ask him to contact me. I’d love to use one of his live concerts on Radio Anglais on my radio shows and I’m sure that my listeners would love it too.

This group on stage at the Barracks Tent was the winner of this year’s “Rising Stars” competition and unfortunately I forgot to enquire as to the name of the band … "it’s Free to Grow" – ed.

The stage in the Barracks Tent is one of the smallest stages at the festival, and yet there are no fewer than nine performerss on the stage. It’s cramped enough when there are only three or four performers on here and these nine were really suffering.

Once again, the music that they were playing, technically competent though it might have been, was not my cup of tea and so I didn’t hang around very long.

But what did impress me was the bassist, who you might have seen on the previous photo. He was playing what looked to me like a six-string bass and it’s been quite a long time since I’ve seen one of those on stage.

My permabulations took me back to the Mojo Tent. I’d seen Matt Minglewood and his band warming up earlier as I was wandering around and I was determined not to miss his set.

He had a four-piece band, consisting of himself on guitar and vocals, a keyboardist and drummer who provided the backing vocals, and a bassist. And all in all, it was a very tight set and from what I saw, I enjoyed the show immensely.

And did you notice the bassist? Yes, we had a female bassist who looked as if she might have been Matt Minglewood’s grand-daughter.

From what I heard of her, she kept her bass lines simple and basic, but then what else do you need in a show like this? And if she ever reads these notes, she’s quite welcome to come round to my tent and have a play on my instrument any time she likes. After all, I do have a Jaguar in my truck, don’t I?

He was a really popular performer with the crowd and rightly so because what I saw of his performance was quite impressive.

I was inclined to ask him to do something for Radio Anglais but at the last moment I had a change of heart. It turns out that he is an out-and-out militarist and spent much of his time regaling the Canadian Armed Forces and their aggressive and unprovoked invasion of Afghanistan.

I’m not having my listeners infected by any of this kind of nonsense and so I desisted. People who adopt polarised positions have to accept the consequences of their actions.

And I couldn’t hang around anyway. The battery in the camera was going flat and Canned Heat are up next in an hour. I need to do some charging.

Having rustled up the battery charger and infinity lead, I shot off to Tim Horton’s for a coffee and a charge. But, to my surprise, the Tim Horton’s in town has no public charging points. Consequently, I refused my coffee and wandered off elsewhere, eventually finding an outdoor power point at the local church where I could listen to (but not see) Garrett Mason in the Hoodoo House.

Back at the Mojo Tent, playing to a disappointingly small audience, was Canned Heat.

I couldn’t understand that. For a start, the Mojo Tent is not the best venue for one of the oldest continuing groups in the history of modern music – the Blues Tent where I’d deen Michael Franti and Spearhead is much more suitable. And I couldn’t understand why the tent here was only half-full anyway. Canned Heat should have packed out the festival.

Mind you, talking to one of the stewards earlier, he told me that for one of the artists here, the tent had been filled to beyond capacity.

The problem that they have is that they sell tickets for the individual shows but issues Ultimate Passes so that people can wander around from venue to venue. And if all of the Ultimate Pass holders were to present themselves at a venue as well as all of the regular ticket holders, then the capacity of the venue will be exceeded.

Returning to the music, I’m not sure whether or not the drummer was the same as when I has seen them previously. He certainly looked different, but then there are a great many reasons why that might happen.

But what made me consider this is that the drummer has a high-pitched voice and you’ll recognise his singing on many of the group’s early hits. And he sand several of the songs last time that I saw them, including “Going Up The Country”. But this time, “Going Up The Country” was sung by the lead guitarist who has a quite different vocal range.

Nevertheless, te performance was quite good and I enjoyed what I heard. But I had other fish to fry – there were still several groups to see and so I set off on my rounds.

But my heart wasn’t in it and I rather lost interest. I treated myself to a big plate of chips (I’d had nothing to eat since breakfast) and headed back to Strider. And here’s a thing. On the side of the street was a hat with a note – something like “thanks to all the musicians” – and people were leaving money in it, even though there was no-one with it, never mind doing anything. Imagine that – in the UK – leaving money lying around like that. Some people have much more faith in human nature than I have.

Back in my tent, I spent a half-hour or so quietly reading a book but at the end of the day I decided that enough was enough.

I turned the light off and settled down for he night. I was going to have an early night.

-2

Thursday 17th September 2015 – AND SO TODAY …

… nobody managed to get in my way. But then again, I didn’t put myself into much of a position where I was likely to be interrupted or diverted (although anything is possible of course).

I had an excellent night’s sleep in the tent, which I reckon that I thoroughly deserved, and I was up early and at work by 07:30 with a mug of coffee and a pile of breakfast biscuits, and it didn’t take all that long to work on the 61 photos that I had taken yesterday. And then they all needed to be imprinted with the copyright logos.

Once I’d done that, I wrote up the blog for yesterday ready to upload as soon as I could find a wifi connection.

One thing that I did manage to do is the change the headlight bulb in Strider. I’d picked one up at Rouses Point when I was there a few days ago, and while I’d been looking for a paper for Strider yesterday, I noticed that there was a section in his handbook about changing the bulb. It looks pretty straightforward but it isn’t, mainly because I don’t think that it had ever been changed before and the clips took quite a bit of forcing with a pipe wrench to move them. But at least he’s all legal now.

I also took the opportunity to have a really beautiful and warm shower.

On the road, first stop was the Atlantic Superstore where I stocked up with food as we are running right low on fruit, veg and bread. And they also had a few other things on special offer. So I now have a full pickup and we’re (almost) ready for anything.

Tim Horton’s came up with an internet connection (they must have made a fortune on coffee since they started on the free wifi connections – I know that they have from me) and after all of that I went to my usual little spec on the boat launching ramp car park opposite the city for lunch.

Home Depot was the next stop, and there I bought all of the wood that I need to make the bed that I want for Strider. And so Strider is now all loaded up with wood. They also had the insulation that I want too, but that’s going to have to wait until I’ve done the bed. I don’t want to load up Strider with stuff that’s going to be in the way. I’m going to buy it as I need it.

And so off to the Festival, and at the Barracks Tent, which has now been erected, we were having a communal yoga session.

As I arrived, they were all going into the mass hypnotism session that they have usually right at the end of every session, and so I engaged in a conversation with the volunteer on the door. We were wondering what might happen should a marching band go storming past the tent at this particular moment

The free stage has been erected at the City Hall, and the first band up on there was Tokyo Valentine. They are local, from Fredericton, and have only been together for a short while.

The vocals were a little, well, hit-and-miss, but musically there was nothing wrong with them and they seemed to be enjoying themselves, as did the audience.

In fact, the rhythm section was quite impressive. The drummer was superb and I really enjoyed listening to him.

As for the bassist however, he was easily the best that I have ever seen at this level. And I’m certain that I’ve seen him before too. I don’t remember his face but I do remember his style of play and I’m sure that I’ve seen him before with someone else at a previous Festival.

We had two female singers. One of them was sometimes on the keyboards and sometimes on the tambourine. And her vocals weren’t all that bad but her style wasn’t really a style that appealed to me.

But she knew how to interact with the audience and at one stage went off the stage to dance with everyone in the audience, who clearly enjoyed it too.

The girl on guitar, who was really a mermaid apparently, kept it simple and basic and that’s all that you need to do. But she knew how to get an audience moving too.

All in all, I had to say, what a way to start the Festival. This was quite a good act to have on a free stage, considering some that we have had in the payable venues, and I approached their manager afterwards with a view to doing something with them on Radio Anglais.

But we shall see.

The Hoodoo House is now open for business too and we started off with Tomato Tomato, who come from Saint John. They’ve been at the Festival before but I don’t recall having seen them.

It’s a married couple, who have been together for 11 years, and the kind of music that they were playing was certainly different. It wasn’t jazz and it wasn’t blues either, but whatever it was, they put everything into it.

We had the guy on acoustic guitar and vocals (and by the looks of thing, banjo and a few other stringed instruments too) but it was the woman who interested me.

She was playing almost everything – the washboard, the cymbals, the tin can, and also the bass drum and the tambourine, which she was playing by hitting pedals with her heels.

That must have taken quite some co-ordination, but never mind. She managed it fine and it was really quite different

I’d seen Kill Chicago last year in the “new faces” competition and this year here they are again, back in the Barracks Tent as established performers.

I wasn’t all that impressed by them last year. It wasn’t that their music was bad in any way, it was just that the style of music didn’t appeal to me that much. It’s something like modern pseudo-punk, high energy stuff.

They were much more refined this year, having had 12 more months to work on their act, and the audience clearly enjoyed the music that they were hearing.

But as I said, it’s not for me and, in all honesty, I don’t know why it’s the kind of music that should feature at the festival. I don’t reckon that it’s blues, and it’s certainly not jazz.

Now, this is much, very much more like it.

We’ve all seen these before. It’s the Record Company and they’ve been here at the Festival before too. Playing proper music with exactly the right number of musicians on stage for a change, and they made the most of it.

We had a bassist and a drummer and also a third musician who played guitar but also occasionally played mouth organ (without the guitar).

Now I’ve said on numerous occasions that I don’t like harmonicas in blues bands, but that’s because most musicians don’t know how to play it properly. But here, the musician certainly knew how to use it, and he was using it in a novel way as backing to the bass and drums., and that’s different.

He also played slide guitar and bottleneck guitar (with a real bottleneck and this isn’t something that you see every day), and all in all, this was a really good performance.

They have moved clearly into first place on my hit list, and I sent a message backstage to contact them about doing something for Radio Anglais. We’ll have to see about that too.

Now this is an interesting duo, for sure.

We’ve not yet had an old traditional blues musician on stage yet – the kind that we always used to have back in the days when I first started coming to the Festival – but here we are at last, and about time too. And in the Hoodoo House, which is where I always used to spend my time back in those days.

This is Old Man Luedecke, and with a name like this, there has to be something about the blues in the performance.

He was accompanied by a mandolin … "PERSONdolin" – ed … player and between them they pumped out some good old Tennessee blues music during the time that I was there, and I would have stayed around had I not had other places to go and other people to see.

A couple of years ago, I’d really enjoyed Keith Hallett’s performance at the Festival, and I’d had quite a lengthy chat with him when I encountered him in the street back then.

He and his band had led my hit-list for quite a lengthy period that year (was it 2013?) until they were overtaken right at the very end of the Festival by the 24th Street Wailers and then by someone else whose name I have forgotten.

I was therefore quite looking forward to seeing his act this year, and when I noticed that he’d reduced his band from a four-piece to a three-piece (the right number of musicians on stage in any rock or blues band, in my opinion – lead vocalists may be extra) I knew that we were going to be in for a really good night back at the Barracks Tent.

And I wasn’t to be disappointed either.

And here he is, with his well-worn and well-battered semi-acoustic guitar, belting out the blues at 100mph.

As you might have expected, he’s soared to the top of my hit-list now and he’s yet another one to whom I’ve slipped a little note to ask him to contact me about doing something for Radio Anglais. I’d feature an hour-long live show by him at any day of the week. This performance was special.

Final act on stage (at least, that I saw – I’m not as young as I was and can’t keep it up like I used to) was Michael Franti and his backing band, Spearhead.

Franti is quite a well-known performer in North America with a string of hits behind his name (although he’s never made it across to Europe) and is one of the most popular live performers on the “circuit”. And it’s easy to see why from this performance.

His interaction with the crowd was stunning, to say the least. Just like Gord Downey last year, he knew how to reach out to the crowd, and that included going walkabout and having a dance on one of the refreshment tables in the middle of the hall.

And there’s no doubt whatever that everyone in the crowd enjoyed it. And going over to a woman in a wheelchair and giving her a big kiss was a piece of art.

The music though, was a long way short of the blues and that wasn’t for me.

But there was no doubt about the quality of it all because his backing band was superb. He had a young energetic lead guitarist, an old powerful bassist, a competent keyboard player and a wild, enthusiastic drummer, and they gelled together completely to belt it out for hours. I thoroughly enjoyed that part of the concert.

However all good things come to an end and I headed for home. But I was interrupted by a vegan wrap from a mobile food stand. They are all here now, and there’s a much bigger vegan choice of food on sale than in previous years.

Things are looking up!

And talking of that, what have – or haven’t you noticed tonight?

Despite all of my whinging yesterday, we haven’t had any brass sections. That’s a big improvement as far as I am concerned. I hope that it keeps up.

And by the way …

Wednesday 16th September 2015 – AND THE ANSWER TO YESTERDAY’S QUESTION IS …

… just about everybody.

Actually, that’s not quite right.

First port of call was the Scotia Bank. One of the things that I need is a bank statement with my name and Canadian address on it. And so to the Scotia Bank on the north side of Fredericton, and as you might expect, it was closed.

After a coffee however, it was open, and the bank quite happily obliged with the information. You can’t say fairer than that.

Next stop was Service Canada. They don’t have an immigration service office there – it’s in a separate department elsewhere and callers are only accepted by appointment. But they did have a telephone number and eventually, after a considerable wait and jumping through a great number of hoops, I was put through to a human being.

I need an immigration form 1M1442 setting out my entitlement to be in Canada. This can be applied for on-line, but the waiting list is … errr … three months, by which time I shall be out of the country. I can however obtain it at the border when I cross in.

And so after a great deal of discussion, there was only one solution – and that was to go BACK to Houlton where I crossed in yesterday, and pick it up from there. Of course, that will take a good few hours, but you spend more time debating the issue than actually doing anything and I am playing for high stakes here, so off I went.

And at the border we had the most astonishing arrangement that makes European bureauocracy look like nothing at all. I could only pick up the document as I ENTERED the country, so I had to leave the country, go and annoy the American immigration people (who were not in the least amused, and who can blame them?), do a U-turn, and then go back in to Canada.

Back in Canada, after much discussion, I ended up with the manager of the Canadian Immigration office there. They do indeed issue IM1442 forms there, but only for immigration purposes, not for demographic purposes. However he did accept that laws and rules and regulations change according to events, and he would have been quite happy to issue a document to me, but he needed something in writing from the Insurance Company.

And here’s the rub – the manager of the Insurance Company REFUSED to put the details in writing and to fax them to the Immigration Office – so that was that. I was there for a good few hours in earnest discussion, but I’m a miserable pleader at moments like this. However, I am in possession of the address of the Insurance Company Head Office (it’s in Dartmouth, opposite Halifax) and so I shall go to Home Depot and sort out a suitable pickaxe handle, then go for a drive.

Despite everything that the manager of the Immigration Service did for me, Service New Brunswick wouldn’t budge either, although they did give me the phone number of the Appeals body. I shall just have to apply on-line for this form – which of course takes much longer than the time that I’ll be spending in Canada – and the Insurance Company will still honour the policy as long as my application is ongoing.

Back at Fredericton (good old Strider), the Festival proper started tonight with two tents opened – the Blues Tent and the Mojo tent.

First up on stage at the Blues Tent were the Mellotones.

First thing to say about them, as you can see from the photo here, is that there are far too many musicians up there on the stage. Four too many in fact. I’ve no idea why they needed a brass section but there you are.

I mean – they were good at what they did – there’s no denying that of course – but it’s not my kind of music at all.

It certainly wasn’t blues, and as for jazz, well, jazz can be very good if it IS very good, but working over a few Bar-Kays numbers and that kind of thing isn’t really what I was expecting to hear. In fact, I found it all rather a dismal proceeding

From here I popped into the library. I’ve been writing quite a bit on certain occasions about the railway lines in New Brunswick and I went to see if they had any old maps of the area. And sure enough, they produced a set of old maps that showed quite a few railway lines, but it was dated from the late 19th Century and there were many lines which I know existed but were not recorded. I had been hoping for a map of the 1930s, but they had nothing from that era.

I wandered on from the library to the Mojo tent, in time to catch the start of the Downtown Blues Band.

We’d had the Bar-Kays in the Blues tent and so in the Mojo tent we had the Blues Brothers. The Downtown Blues Band played a re-hash of numbers from the film of the same name.

This was another occasion of far too many musicians on the stage. I’ve absolutely no idea why many of these groups want to have brass sections, and indeed why the organisers of the Festival want to book them. It beats me.

But then, as I have said so many times before, the rest of the audience enjoyed them. I’m clearly in a minority of one here.

The female singer was clearly enjoying herself on the stage. She was having a good time too.

And it has to be said – they were quite good at what they did. But to my mind, it’s not jazz and it’s not blues either. There’s clearly something that I’m missing here.

Back to the Blues tent and we had JJ Grey and Mofro from Florida. They’ve played the Festival before, but I somehow seem to have managed to miss them.

They started off quite well and I was feeling that I might actually enjoy this concert. But my feeling of elation didn’t last long.

They played a number that was crying out for a lead guitar solo, and they built up to this over a period of a good five minutes, or so it appeared to me.

And then we got it – the solo. But, would you believe, played on a trumpet. Well, I suppose, you would believe it after having read what I have written up to date. It was so disappointing as far as I was concerned.

And so back to the Mojo tent, and this was the Halifax group Paper Beat Scissors.

They are now living in Montreal and recording CDs, and they weren’t all that bad. They were something similar to Sigur Ros, but singing in English of course, and I didn’t mind at all staying here for a while to listen to them.

The one big drawback that they had was that they had a brass section.

When they wheeled on the French horn of whatever it is during the warm-up, I feared the worst. And I was right too, because even though the player started off on the keyboards and shaking his maraccas too, it didn’t take too long for him to get on the horn.

However, the singer had a good voice for what he was doing, and they were definitely the best band that I have seen here so far this year

But then again, that doesn’t say all that much for them. They haven’t had all that much competition to date as far as I was concerned.

Back again at the Blues tent, and we had Galactic on stage.

They started off with an instrumental number, and of course we did have the brass section that has featured in every act to date and it’s thoroughly dismayed me, in case you haven’t guessed

However, we were soon joined by a singer, a young lady from Louisiana if I remember correctly.

And their second number was a scorcher too. This was much more like it, even with the brass section and I quite enjoyed that. I was quite optimistic with that and was quite looking forward to the rest of the set.

But it was not to be, unfortunately.

Despite the energy that our vocalist was putting into her show, the third number degenerated into a rap number and if there’s one thing that really grates on my nerves, it’s rap music. This kind of stuff isn’t for me at all, and I beat a rather hasty retreat.

But not before we had had a little excitement on stage.

We had a small, lightweight platform on stage and they had an organ and a heavy drum kit crammed onto it. And I mean ‘crammed” too because there was no room for anyone to move and the drummer was extremely enthusiastic to say the least.

With the platform bouncing around, I was betting with myself about how long it would be before all of this went pear-shaped and sure enough, just a couple of minutes in to the performance, part of the drum kit collapsed across the stage. We had the roadie trying to rebuilt it all the time that the drummer was playing with what was left of the kit, and in the end they weighted it down with sandbags.

Now this is very much more like it.

At the Mojo tent we had Wintersleep.

I’d missed the start of their act because the performance of Galactic had started late, and so I can’t tell you all that much about them. but what I can say is that they were a four-piece band and I enjoyed their performance very much.

There was no brass section – or mouth organ – in sight while I was there and they were playing real music from my point of view.

Nothing quite as electric or as lively as Samantha Fish or the 24th Street Wailers, but then again, what could ever be as lively as all of that, but it was good enough to hold my attention for quite a while.

And so we definitely have a winner of today’s entertainment – something that was looking very unlikely after the first couple of acts this evening.

I’ll have to go and have a look for these and see if I can’t lay my hands on a live performance for broadcasting on Radio Anglais sometime in the near future. It would be quite enjoyable, that’s for sure.

And so I went back to Mactaquac Provincial Park and my tent.

I’d had a good night’s sleep last night for once and that had certainly helped with all of the issues that I had had to deal with during the day. I don’t suppose that tomorrow is going to be any different and so I’ll need to have a good night’s sleep.

And by the way …

… the photos that I’ve posted for tonight’s acts at the Harvest Jazz and Blues Festival are only a small sample of the dozens and dozens that I took during the evening. If you want to see any more of those that I took, you’ll need to contact me. Leave a comment and I’ll be in touch.

Tuesday 15th September – I WAS RIGHT …

… yesterday when I said that this first month of my stay in North America had been one of 30 disappointments. We’ve had another issue raise its ugly head today too.

There’s only one company in Canada that insures vehicles for people with non-Canada driving licences (and they make people suffer financially for that of course) but it seems that since April this year they have ceased that particular line of business. And so the motor insurance for Strider has been rejected, leaving me without insurance cover.

However, the company has said that cover can remain on a temporary basis while I apply of a driving licence in Canada and so that’s what I’ll do. Apply for a Canadian driving licence.

Of course.

How long it might take, and whether it might be granted is of course another thing completely, and then there will always be an appeal process if it’s refused. But by that time of course I’ll be back home in France and it won’t be an issue. And next year is, of course, next year.

And so tomorrow, I’ll get on the case.

But if you think logically about it, it’s all a nonsense. There is without any doubt at all at least one company that insures drivers with foreign driving licences. If there wasn’t a single one, then how would car hire work? I’ve hired dozens of cars in North America and each hire has been with my French driving licence. And I still can do so (because I’ve checked). You aren’t going to tell me that a car hire company is going to let its customers drive around in uninsured vehicles, are you?

And it’s true (or it was true – at least in the UK) that when I worked in the motor insurance business, a company or a person could insure himself against liability. But he had to deposit a bond of £50,000 (and that was in 1972 – I shudder to think what that figure would be today) per vehicle and that money is tied up. I can’t see a hire company going through all of that, having the money tied up, no tax relief, no interest payments and all of this.

No – there is a company somewhere that specialises in this business and I have to find it. I’ve always said that where there’s a will, there are relatives. It’s just one more problem to solve. Now, how do you go about setting up a car hire business in Canada?

But apart from that for the moment, I slept the sleep of the dead last night. I crashed out at 20:28 and that was that until I had to go and ride the porcelain horse. An early(-ish) start and I did a pile of work and then a copious breakfast. I really can’t believe all of this for just $59:40 (including tax).

But while I was eating my breakfast I was watching TV (something that I rarely do of course) and the disclaimers for the adverts (which are often longer than the ads themselves) are quite often funnier than any comedy programme you would care to name. This morning we had a “do not take {this product} if you are allergic to any of its ingredients”. And you can’t make that up, can you?

Back on the road Walmart came up trumps with the big tent pegs that I’m going to need if I use this tarpaulin oversheet idea for the tent, and it also produced a couple of gas canisters for my cooker (they are becoming harder and harder to find as everyone changes over to the bigger sort) and a set of stubby spanners, which cost just $4:49. Ideal for getting into tight corners. But Mardens couldn’t produce a 19mm ring spanner at any cost. Still, I have an open-ended one and a socket and I hope that that will do me if I need anything.

At the border, I was whacked for import duty on the truck cap. $90:00 or something like that, but I don’t suppose that this is excessive really. It’s worked out as 5% of the value (in Canadian dollars), including, would you believe, the sales tax that I had to pay in the USA. That’s a bit near the knuckle.

I had a race down the Trans-Canada Highway with a lorry – simply because I didn’t recognise his number plate and I wanted to see where he came from.

As it happens, he comes from Georgia (that’s Georgia USA, not the former Soviet republic) and so he was a long way away from home. It seems that the Maritime Provinces are becoming more and more popular.

Af Fredericton I picked up my parking pass for the next three days (foreign visitors can park free in the town centre for three days if they apply to the tourist office for a pass), picked up my media passes for the festival and went to have a chat with the people at Service New Brunswick who gave me a couple of useful tips.

At Value Village, it’s Pensioners Day and I profited to the maximum with a pile of books, a couple of CDs and also (at long last) the Canadian cable that I need for my laptop power pack (which saves having to hump around a pile of adapters. Walmart and Home Depot came up with nothing exciting and so I went for my traditional falafel platter in the Lebanese restaurant and then came back here – “here” being the Mactaquac Provincial Park campsite where I stay when I’m here.

But we did have a very interesting encounter this afternoon. You may remember yesterday that I was talking about big old British single-cylinder motorcycles. Anyway, wandering down the street in Fredericton I noticed a young guy sitting on, of all things, a Triumph T100. 1971 it was, and it looked it too. In original, unrestored condition looking every day as old as it was. We were chatting for hours about old British bikes and of course, AJS and Matchless motorcycles figured heavily. And it turns out that he has a friend who has a fetish about the big AJS and Matchless singles and who, at the last count, has 14 of them, plus numerous crates of bits and pieces. And so he’s taken my e-mail address and says that he’ll pass it over to this guy.

And so that was that. I buried myself in my sleeping bag ready for bed.

Now who is going to come along and spoil my day tomorrow?

Monday 15th June 2015 – IN THE 20 HOURS …

… between my going out late last night to take the stats and going out this evening for something to drink, we’ve had a mere 48.5mm of rainfall. and it’s been raining ever since as well.

That makes about 120mm in the last four days and that’s an astonishing amount. We’ll all be washed away if it carries on like this.

This morning after breakfast I carried on with the internet stuff that I hadn’t finished yesterday. I’ve made a list of all of the bands that have impressed me at the Fredericton Jazz and Blues Festivals that I’ve attended, traced as many as I could on the internet, and sent them a mail to ask them if there was a live concert recorded that I could use on the radio. This is something that I’ve been meaning to do for quite a while, and I’ve finally made a start. And already, I’ve had two positive replies.

While I was rooting around with all of that paperwork on Saturday I came across a mirror. I nice bulls-eye mirror with a brass surround rather like a ship’s porthole. Someone gave it to me when I had my first house in Winsford and it’s followed me around Europe ever since. It’s finally found a permanent home on the first floor landing here and good luck to it.

I’ve also extended the light circuit here. On the ground floor where my workshop is, there’s only one light – a 4-watt LED and that’s by the front door. The rear part of the house is quite dark and it’s not so easy to see there when one is working, especially in the gloomy conditions of the last few days.

There was a light with a long lead that I used when I was working in the bedroom before I installed the permanent lights there. So today, I stripped off the plug and wired it into the lighting circuit downstairs. That’s given me much more useful light down there, even if it is just a 1-watt LED.

I’ve found a pine off-cut that’s fine for the upper shelf over the beichstuhl. I cut that to shape and varnished both sides. Tomorrow morning early I’ll put the second coat on the shelf and then that will be ready to fit.

This afternoon I’ve been cutting and fitting plasterboard for the beichstuhl corner. I’ve fitted what I can fit and I’ll do the rest when the shelf is in position. Then, I can take out the worktop where the sink will be, drill it for the sink waste-pipe and the taps and then varnish it. While it’s drying, I’ll fit the mounting rails in the correct place and then install the worktop correctly.

Then, I can start on fitting the door frame.

-1

Saturday 13th September 2014 – DAY FOUR OF THE HARVEST JAZZ AND BLUES FESTIVAL

Little did I know it last night, with everything being so quiet and peaceful where I had parked last night, that the tents around me were packed full of infants.

When I’m in Canada, I’m usually up quite early – the alarm goes off at 06:30 and I’m usually awake long before that, but these kids beat me easily to the draw. It’s a good job that I wasn’t planning on a lie-in this morning.

I dashed through the photos and the texts and then set off for the Tim Hortons on the edge of Fredericton to upload everything to the web, stopping off at the petrol station at Keswick where fuel is just 122.9 cents per litre.

I wandered up to Value Village to see whether they had anything in the line of a new tote bag to replace the one where the zip has broken and sure enough, the place did me proud. There was a new $50 rucksack in there at just $12.99. Not quite the cavernous one that I was hoping to find but it’s certainly bigger than anything else that I might find at that price.

Parking at Fredericton was horrendous today. It took me ages to find somewhere that was near the city centre, and there was still a long walk into town. Still, needs must when the devil drives, I suppose.

First person whom I stumble upon is Mike Peters. He’s had a promotion this year, playing at the CBC busking spot in the centre of town. You may well recall that last year he was playing stuck around the back of everywhere by the footbridge over the by-pass.

I’m not quite sure where he will go from here, but it’s a shame, if not a tragedy, that he can’t be given a place as a support act at one of the more formal venues. He’s streets better than some of the performers we’ve seen on there.

Here at the Officers Square, this is Double Dutch Hutch whom we have seen before. I’m not sure when but it might have been 2011, I reckon. I just caught the tail-end of their show and saw them perform Londa Ronstadt’s "You’re No Good" and Bob Dylan’s "Mr Tambourine Man" and I wish that I had caught some more of them too because I really enjoyed their music.

And as for his team of go-go dancers, then good luck to them, and good luck to him too.

Carrying on into the Mojo Tent, we have Morgan Davis on stage. He was at the Officers Square – was it yesterday? He had Rick Fines with him today and we met him too in 2011 – I remember speaking to him and the bassist whom he had with him at the time, a female bassist whose name I have also forgotten but who I remember was pretty good.

Bassist tonight is Alex Fraser, and we have of course the famous Jeff Arsenault on drums.

With Morgan Davis and Rick Fines together on stage you don’t need to say too much about their performance do you? Traditional simple home-spun blues, and played to perfection too, especially when it’s backed by Alex and Jeff.

It’s a shame that many of the performers here can’t keep things simple and basic. There’s quite a place for this kind of simplicity here at the Festival

These are the Revivalists and it’s much easier sitting on top of the bleachers at the back of the marquee with the big telephoto lens. And another Gibson bass as well.

and all that I can say is that I’m really sorry that I missed most of their set because I was quite enjoying what I heard. They finished with the old Blues Brothers standard “Somebody to Love” and did quite a good job of it too.

The Chris Robinson Brotherhood is another Southern Rock band. The musicians are somewhat under-rehearsed but they have the crowd bouncing around as well and this is going to be a good concert if they can keep going like this

So as well as a very competent moog synthesizer player we had a duelling guitar solo right at the end just like most Southern bands and it was really good. The drummer is excellent too but I did notice that he was counting the bars as he was playing.

But the sad thing about all of this is that with not having been to bed until long after midnight, and waking up at 06:00 to do the photos and the notes, I’m crashing out here, even in the middle of a rock concert and so in the end it’s all too much and I head back to the car to crash out there.

I’d parked the car near to the Government Offices in Fredericton and as I passed, I noticed a woman setting up a tripod to photograph the floodlit building. I fell in with her and we had quite a chat about all kinds of things.

I realised that I don’t actually have a decent night photograph of the building and so while I was talking, I added one to my collection.

And then I hit the road

And I’ve been spending more of my money today, more of which anon

-3

Friday 12th September 2014 – DAY THREE OF THE HARVEST JAZZ AND BLUES FESTIVAL

Mind you, it might not have been, for I’d been on my travels again during the night.

I’d been working for years in an office and was to retire in a couple of days. I’d several files on a shelf behind me where they had been for several years, files that I hadn’t been able to deal with. I was planning to surreptitiously shred them so that no-one would find them. It did occur to me that I could simply leave them and it wouldn’t make any difference as I wouldn’t be there to face the consequences, but my pride wouldn’t let me do that.

There were also some items hanging on a chain link fence and they needed to be removed too, and Nerina put in an appearance to lend me a hand.

On that note, I awoke to something of a chill, but also to a little sunshine. The weather had improved considerably during the night, but there was quite a strong wind blowing.

There was so much work to do from yesterday so I had to press on without stopping to make a coffee – I could fuel up at a Tim Horton’s when I upload everything to the internet. However it took a while to make it to Tim Horton’s as I came across a Salvation Army thrift shop (but no books or CDs for me) and then went shopping in the Atlantic Superstore.

Once I’d had the coffee and done the work, it was into town as things were starting early today.

This is the Alex Bailey Swing Band apparently, although there wasn’t a swing in sight, no matter how much all of the children here would have loved to have been on it. Playing in the fine weather on the free stage at Officers Square to a contented crowd sitting in the sunshine.

For me though, the music didn’t do much to warm me up as Jazz isn’t really my thing and so I wandered off to see whatever else I could find.

This is a group called Kill Chicago. They were featuring at the Barracks Tent, taking part in the Galaxie Rising Stars Showcase.

They were another group that blew hot and cold as well – sometimes some of their stuff was quite enjoyable and at other times it didn’t appeal to me. Still, I have to admit that i’m getting old and it’s going to be very rare that a group of musicians 30 and 40 years younger than me would play music that would keep me riveted in my seat.

Technically though, there wasn’t much wrong with them, and that’s the kind of thing that is always worth admiring.

Back on the Free Stage at Officers Square we had Morgan Davis and his long-time drummer Jeff Arsenault. They are Festival regulars although it’s a shame to see them relegated to a Free Stage in an early afternoon rather than as a support act in a marquee venue. Sign of the times, I suppose. And shame as it is to say it, I can’t remember the name of the bassist, whom I have met before.

His set was exactly what you would expect it to be – a very competent and talented set of home-spun blues. And I did like his reference to the “United Snakes of America”.

First up this evening in the Blues Tent was, at long last, a real Blues performer. Gord Downie, The Sadies and The Conquering Sun. And that was a belting, powerhouse performance, well worth the wait for this. I thoroughly enjoyed every moment of this performance.

He had the correct number of musicians on the stage too – with no keyboards, no horns and no harmonica either, and his lead guitarist was one of the best that I have heard in years as well. During one track he played a lengthy solo right up at the top end of the scale of his guitar and that somehow found its way into my bones.

Downie was a showman and a performer if ever there was one too, and he was also a few other things besides, but we won’t go into them on these pages.

If I had been writing these notes 30 years or so ago I would have described this as an outrageously camp performance, but I’m not so sure that these terms are acceptable these days. I will have to think of another way to express exactly what I mean.

Their performance finished with a high-energy punk number, and having seen a few of these here this last couple of days, all I can say is that Downie and his bands put these other punk musicians to shame and if punk music had been played as he and his band played it, it would never have been classed as the nadir of performing music.

What an amazing concert. I really enjoyed this set, so it’s “hats off” to Gord Downie, who cheered me up immensely and restored my faith in the festival. But it was sad to see so few people enjoying this concert with me.

This is a busking group out there on the free stage at the Fredericton Tourist Information Office and I’ve heard worse than these too. They are called the Arlens, I think.

I can think of many worse ways to pass a free half-hour of my time. The audience enjoyed it anyway, boogie-ing about even if the music was a little hit-and-miss. As for the singer though, well, he must have been having an off-day I reckon.

Shame as it is to say it, I was somewhat disappointed by Blackberry Smoke.

However this was entirely due to the video that I had seen of one of their live performances, and that was something quite extraordinary, but then as a promotional item they would always use the best publicity available and I’m fully aware of that kind of thing, so I was expecting it.

So perhaps I wasn’t really disappointed after all.

What I wasn’t expecting though was the tirade launched from the stage about the Canadian Customs and Border Control. It seems that they have had the same issues with them that I have been having.

Had I caught the group unawares, I would have been enthralled by what I had seen because as a Southern Rock jam-band (from Atlanta in Georgia apparently, which should come as no surprise to anyone), they might not have been in the same class as The Outlaws or Widespread Panic, but they would be by far and away the best band that I would ever likely to catch a l’improviste.

And a Gibson bass too. What bliss! I was beginning to think that I was the only bassist in the world still to be playing one.

They did the track about “One More Silver Dollar” – the Allman Brothers one – and that involved a jam that went on for about three hours (and quite right too – my only complaint being that it didn’t go on for four hours). And somewhere along the line the managed to fit in a sample of “When the Levee Breaks” – the old Led Zeppelin show-closer.

All in all, I enjoyed this show too. It did drag a little in the middle but when they did break out into a jam solo here and there it lifted my spirits again. “Naked self-indulgence” I hear you say, and even if it might be, ask me if I care. I’d go along to see these again.

One thing that I will be doing as soon as I return home, whenever that might be, will be to try to track down a live performance somewhere to use on the radio.

If you have read my remarks on harmonicas, you would be forgiven for thinking that I hate the instrument. But that’s not really so. What I hate about it is
1) Almost every Blues musician thinks that it’s an essential part of the blues, and no blues can ever be performed without it.
2) Most harmonica players don’t know how to play the instrument.

So how will we get on with Blues Traveler, who is really a harmonica soloist with a few vocals here and there and a backing band?

The answer to that is that he’s the only blues musician who knows how to play it properly, and when I noticed that his bassist had a collection of 5-string basses on stage (unfortunately, all Fenders but you can’t legislate for that) I suspected that this could be an excellent performance with much more to the music than just the harmonica.

And I was right too. This was a stunning performance. We did, of course, have “Canadian Rose” – that was odds-on, wasn’t it? And we had a magnificent keyboards solo during one of the tracks. But as for the harmonica playing, well everyone else might just simply throw away their harmonicas for they will never ever be able to reproduce the sounds that came out of this one. It’s a waste of time trying.

The net result of all of this is that with Gord Downie and His Mates, Blackberry Smoke and Blues Traveler, I’ve had one of the best night’s entertainments that I have ever had, and I was walking on air on the way back to the Dodge, long after my usual bedtime.

Only downside of the day was that when I returned to the camp site I discovered that someone has pinched my spec and was having a barbecue there. I wasn’t in the mood for confrontation and so I cleared off and found another pitch somewhere else.

-1

EPIC HALL

The Poisoned Pen (or Poisoned Chalice, more like) – or my relentless struggle against reality

Tag Archives: harvest jazz and blues festival

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Saturday 13th September 2014 – DAY FOUR OF THE HARVEST JAZZ AND BLUES FESTIVAL

Friday 12th September 2014 – DAY THREE OF THE HARVEST JAZZ AND BLUES FESTIVAL

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