New CD and Artisan Catchup

[jacey]

New CD has arrived! Whee.
Called 'Random Play'.
Eleven tracks (written by Brian Bedford) and only a tenner from gigs or £11.50 by post worldwide.
Available from here

We're dead pleased with the eco-friendly packaging. It's in a light-but-shiny, cardboard, gatefold sleeve - with a spine so you can still store it with your plastic cased CDs - and it weighs in at less than 50g.

Artisan reunion tour is going well, but busy busy with gigs from Stonehaven (just south of Aberdeen) to South Moulton (North Devon).

Barely time to keep up with email and little time for LJ and even less for facebook. Have now finished all UK gigs in July. Met up with lots of old friends. (Hey, less of the OLD, they cry!) Getting ready to head off for Canada on Wednesday, leaving Mum and Diezel Dog looking after each other (and manning the office together). I think Mum might make a better job of opening the post, though Diezel always volunteers to do it.

First gig is Lunenburg Folk Harbour Festival in Nova Scotia. Our fourth of fifth time there and this is the one that asked us to reunite for their 25th anniversary - so it's all their fault, really! it's also the festival where we met Tanglefoot in 1995 or 96.

After the weekend in Lunenburg we fly to Toronto to stay with friends Nigel and Clarisse for five days, playing already sold-out Houseconcert for DW who was the director of the very first festival we ever played in Canada in 1994.

Then we have a gig on the next Sauturay at the Aeolian Hall in London Ontario and our support act is... wait for it... Steve Ritchie and Al Parrish ex of Tanglefoot. These are the guys who look like (respectively) Charles II and Jesus. Fee? Hey this is a gig we'd have paid to do! (But don't tell the organiser!)

And the following day we drive up to Chatsworth Ontario - about 3 hours north of Toronto and a few minutes siuth of Owen Sound, to stay with the aforementioned Steve for five days. There's another houseconcert gig in Grey Highlands, close to Chatsworth. But the big gig is at the end of the week: the Owen Sound Summerfolk Festival. A fabulous music and crafts festival.

The two festivals we're playing are two of my favourite festivals in the whole world.

We fly home on 23rd August and start the UK gigs all over again - well, different venues, you know - on 2nd September (until 17th). We're exactly halfway through the British gigs, now, with 12 in July and 12 in September.