Evolution
The Here and Now
It seems unbelievable, though inescapable, that 2008 marks 35 years since Tom, Chris and Steve made their first, tentative foray
into harmony group singing. Even more incredible is that it’s almost 30 years since Pat, Ken and Mike joined in, and the
line-up has barely altered in that time.
We couldn`t claim that it has remained unaltered, not least because a reduction in overall hair volume and colour
immediately exposes the truth! However, what we hope has remained very consistent is the nature, style and content
of the songs and performances.
Whilst we have, inevitably, developed our own sound and presentation, we have always tried to keep faithful to those early
influences, which so much informed our early years.
As previously noted, our bias has always been towards an interaction with audiences rather than with technology – getting
a buzz from the crowd rather that from studio amplifiers! – And this will always remain our enduring inspiration and
motivation. Having said that, we do feel that, after twelve years, it’s probably about time that we put another
album together.
Year after year we are asked when a new CD will be released, or even when we will be re-releasing the earlier albums in CD
format. Sadly, most of the masters of the earlier recordings are no longer within our control, and in any we have refined
most of the arrangement over the intervening years.
What we have eventually decided upon is to incorporate some re-recordings of songs that have already appeared in earlier albums,
alongside some group arrangement of songs that we have only previously sung as individuals.
We are trusting that our festival audiences over the 2008 season will be generous enough to help us to hone our arrangements of
these "newer" songs, to enable us to take them into the studio in October 2008.
So, it seems that, reinvigorated by the new songs and album, and with a fair wind following, this is merely the
"end of the beginning" and we will be continuing our "folk Odyssey" for some time to come.
There are, of course, a multitude of stories that could be told about our "life on the road", but they are all too long in
the telling – its possible that, sometime in the future, we will serialise them and add bits to this site or maybe we’ll
just have to write "the book" – watch this space.