Jaywalkers: Life since the Young Folk Awards

Posted By: Jaywalkers 07/01/2010 10:31:03

After reaching the final of the BBC Young Folk Award (Dec 2008), Mike and I (Jaywalkers) immediately went on to increase the size, and develop the range, of our repertoire. Despite performing together on an informal basis since approximately 2003, we had never really rehearsed or arranged any material as a duo; entering the Young Folk Award with only a few months practise and 4 or 5 performable pieces under our belts. A few weeks on from the final itself, we recorded these songs for later demo purposes and then continued to expand our material in preparation for the following year. By March 2009 we’d brought together a repertoire to fill two forty-five minute sets – giving us the ability to play full length Jaywalkers gigs.

Using summer 2008 as practise time, 2009’s summer was an exciting prospect for Jaywalkers in that that is when we really got to launch into using our new repertoire (the summer being the best opportunity with both of us in education) and finally be able to perform something that we had put a lot of hard work into. We were lucky in getting a range of opportunities too; performing last year at a variety of festivals (Coastline Bluegrass, Middlewich Folk and Boat, Bideford, Fylde, The Brindley Theatre’s Bluegrass and Beyond), folk clubs (Bromborough, Sandbach), private functions, as well the chance to display our type of music, along with Bath banjo player John Breese, to primary schools in the South Glos. area. After a successful and thoroughly enjoyable few months, we used October to record a further demo recording that portrays some of our more recent work; consisting of six tracks (some of which can be heard at our Myspace page) including original tracks written by Mike.

Now in the new year of 2010, we are continually expanding and rehearsing our material and using our time to organise this year’s musical opportunities for a summer that is hopefully as successful and truly pleasing as 2009’s.

Jay
Jaywalkers

www.myspace.com/miknjaybobs

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