Happenings and Occurrings

Summer greetings to you all. We hope you're all doing well out there. We have a very exciting piece of news for you as well as some dates for your autumn diaries, and a few updates.

We were totally over the moon to learn last week that we have been nominated for a BBC Radio 2 Folk Award for Best Traditional Track. Reedcutter’s Daughter was nominated alongside tracks from Ye Vagabonds, Lisa O’Neill ft Radie Peat, and Vri. We honestly didn’t think we stood a chance because there have been so many amazing releases over the last 18 months and there have been a few changes to the format of the awards which have made it even tougher to get a nomination. But we got one...and so we’ll be off to the awards ceremony in Manchester in October!

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We're out and about quite a bit over the next few months. We'll be at Sidmouth Folk Festival tomorrow and Friday afternoon, then Bodmin Folk Club on Friday night. Then we're into the dates below. There are more details on each gig up on our website (jimmyandsidduo.com) and ticket links etc. Please help us spread the word on these gigs and get those tickets in advance.

We're midway through recording the album of our Awake Arise show with Lady Maisery. This is a collection of winter songs and poems and even a little smidgeon of Christmas cheer. It feels a bit bizarre to be recording winter material in midsummer but it's all coming together nicely and we'll have shiny new albums with us on our Awake Arise tour this December. We'll be playing venues across the country and we'll let you know when the dates for that are released.

Earlier in the Spring we did our first bit of gigging abroad as a duo. We travelled over to Madrid for an amazing, sold-out concert in the auditorium at CaixaForum. It was quite an experience for us to share our music with a wholly new audience and we totally loved being representatives of traditional English music abroad. We thought long and hard about whether our flights and the associated carbon could be justified - we have turned down many international gigs in the past for this reason - but we felt that the cultural connections that were possible with this particular venue/promoter/audience combination was worth it. And we weren't disappointed - we met so many amazing people over there and have just confirmed that we'll be heading back to Spain for a run of concerts later this year. We often talk in the van about the environmental impact of our work - all touring musicians cover a lot of miles and occasionally have to fly. We hope that the act of bringing people together, and then maybe inspiring positive action through the music, just about justifies the miles. Who knows. It's a difficult balancing act but one that we are constantly debating and weighing up.