Eat yer heart out, Norman Rockwell! Notice how many of this lot have so nearly gone blind they need specs. It's all that late night noodling and widdling. This photograph is by far the best way we have of keeping these meetings exclusive.
Held the weekend before Easter in the small, once quaintly industrial Derbyshire town of Belper - famous for the mass production of knickers, bras, pantyhose, cleansing petroleum jelly and nails - the fine detail of the venue led us down a dark alley to an incompletely emptied graveyard and a superbly converted chapel, the heart of which provided a massive aula where we could do our thyng. It seems only fitting - sorry, meet - to be a bit Anglo-Saxon as the entire neighbourhood appears to have been named after wing-helmety sort of blokes with names like Elva, Alva and Thurla.
On the Friday night, the Celts got their own back with a visit from Tony McManus:
Who is seen here studiously playing his new Fylde guitar for the benefit ofthe camera. Actually, Tony plays so fast normally that electronic flash is not capable of freezing his fingers. We had to leave it to the Friday weather to do that, combined with the excellent heating system of the chapel which proved capable of finely controlled extremes. After Tony had played for us, the man who made his slightly custom guitar, Roger Bucknall of Fylde Guitars, told us all about his own views on luthiery and showed how the Fylde differs from so many others (bolt-on neck, for one thing).
Roger, hailing from Penrith (the home of hail) failed to give any truly convincing reasons why the largest and best guitar production line on mainland Britain should be sited in humidity and temperature controlled premises in a place renowned for an excess of one and a dearth of the other - but the guitars were, as we already knew, more than impressive. Malcolm Newton of Newtone strings came along too, with stacks of strings to sell. This man works from 5 am to 5 pm daily, feeding wire through his bare hands to wrap a core with outer winding in 20 to 40 seconds, literally tensioning every single string by hand. He needs no advertising and no sales force, as everyone who has ever played his strings becomes a salesman. Perhaps this is why Malcolm delivered to us the briefing, complete with flipchart pad, which his non-existent sales team never get...
We had a wee folk club sort of thingy on the Saturday night. One song or tune per person, except for the wonderfully well rehearsed Acoustic Casualty, a corridor rather than garage band consisting of three imposing young gentlemen. They were called back for more.
Bob Dorgan, see below, was just one of many who crossed the Atlantic by rowing boat (you know how badly airlines treat guitars) to prove that he is more substantial than a mere ghost in the global machine of Internet:
The PA gear was not actually used by the body of the kirk, but was set up earlier by Ken Nichol, who had lugged it all the way from Preston to give the weekend a raggy edge. With more ragtime and a very different visual slant on the blues, Pete Howlett - luthier and player - fascinated people by not requiring any PA whatsoever due to the nature of his self-made 'sharp guitar', shaped like a harp guitar but without any internal sympathetic or external bass strings. The effect of resting your ear on this while playing is interesting and probably as dangerous as standing right next to the band speakers at a rock concert.
Pitching in beyond the call of duty was Alan Marshall, luthier of Northworthy Guitars. Based just seven miles from the chapel venue, he nevertheless abandoned home comforts and stayed in one of the nearby cottages (additional accommodation), forgoing the ancient Derbyshire rite of emptying beer kegs so he could safely drive some seriously tired RMMGAers back to for their brief period of almost sleep. Alan not only brought along some wonderful guitars - like the very expensive Brazilian rosewood parlour guitar he's shown with below - but a big bag of brass bridge pins which many of us bought.
After the weekend was over, Alan took anyone who was interested on a tour of his luthiery shop - and pointed me in the direction of a luthiery supplier in Derbyshire who happened to have two or three factory-rejected, thicknessed, jointed, rosette inlayed and shaped Lowden cedar tops for sale at a tenner each. I'm not greedy so I only bought the best one; it was tempting to buy all of them.
On Monday, Shirley* and I drove first to Chester to see a former employee who's now a successful photographer with an entirely digital studio, and then after leaving him at 7pm hit the high road for North Wales and Conwy, where we knew there was supposed to be a folk club in the Malt Loaf Hotel on Monday nights (an odd night for a folk club). We made Conwy by 7.40pm, booked an excellent room in the Bridge Inn by 8.00, ate an equally excellent meal at Alfredo's and made it into the folk club by 9.30pm - all within a few yards of each other. It turned out to be just the kind of club I like (Alan would like it, too) - a good house PA, friendly but disciplined management of spots, and a liking for ballads, traditional songs and modern songs in the British idiom. It closed about six hours earlier than we had just been used to but it's a place we'll go back to when we can - worth it just for the jokes and electronic horn playing of Gaffer Ferris, North Wales' incarnation of Tom Bombadil.
And so to look forward to the next RMMGA meet, moot or whatever. Anyone for Scotland in October? Say 13th to 16th? With a ticket to an Eric Bogle concert thrown in and Tony McManus doing a workshop? Council subsidies are a hard thing to refuse...
*Not that one - my one! Shirley Worrall (wot brilliantly organised the meeting with Nigel) is bottom left in big photie. My Shirley is fourth from left in the middle row next to Ronan from Dublin. The third Shirley is that parlour guitar, named (so Alan says) after a Derbyshire village, but we all think he really named it after a lady barrister...
David Kilpatrick/April 19th 2000