Fame at last! The January/ February issue of fROOTS magazine (‘eff-roots’) carried a two-page feature about me ‘Doing Fiddle’. The piece, with its strapline about a ‘one-man fiddle inspiration industry’ and ‘leading behind-the-scene activist’, was written by Andrew Cronshaw, himself a splendid musician. Since the feature appeared in a double issue I was ‘flavour’ not only of one month, but two. (Please don’t think me vain or shallow or anything...) If you haven’t yet come across fROOTS (‘Local Music From Out There’), check out their website, www.froots.com

I’d been looking forward, as you may know, to teaching fiddle in Spain at the end of May. Unfortunately, my colleagues in Extremadura have run into some organisational problems and, reluctantly, we’ve had to cancel the course. Sincere apologies to those of you who expressed an interest. I certainly haven’t given up on the idea of combining the joys of fiddle music and sunbathing (two of my favourite forms of exercise), so I’ll let you know when we get back on track.

Rattle on the Stovepipe
new line-up - Pete Dan and Dave

Meanwhile we’ve had an exciting change of line-up in ‘Rattle On The Stovepipe’, with young guitar and 5-string banjo player Dan Stewart replacing our old guitarist Chris Moreton at the start of this year. (What with Chris living in Wales, and ‘Rattle’ gigs mostly in the south-east of England, logistics have always been tough.) Dan Stewart, who’s from East Sussex, has been playing guitar since the age of seven, and our first gigs with him, at Ringwood Folk Club in the New Forest, at Cottingham, near Hull, and at Sheila Miller’s ‘Cellar Upstairs’ folk club in Euston, have been great fun. Dave Arthur, Dan and I are looking forward to many more in the coming months. See ‘Gigs’ for what’s in the diary so far.

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