Immingham Tuesday

After a well-earned rest day it was back on the road for the next run of shows. We have a new driver cum roadie in the person of Jason, who will be with us for the next three weeks or so. I collected him from his house in Kettering and we set off for Northampton. Before we'd travelled to the end of the street I noticed that the fuel warning light was on, so I put £10 of diesel in to get us to Northampton. Three years ago when I toured with Jerry Arhelger I thought the price of diesel was scandalous when it rose to £1.09, now it's £1.39 or so, and shows no sign of coming down.
The trouble is that the amount the clubs can pay has stayed the same, and with an aging club membership and few new members coming through, the outlook isn't good for touring musicians in the UK. Each pound that goes in fuel is a pound out of the musician's pocket, and we now earn less than we did ten or even fifteen years ago, when fuel was half the price it is now.

We called into Northampton, collected Cozy and Lee, put another £60 of diesel in the tank, and with Jason in the driving seat, set off for Immingham, near Grimsby. It's one of those strange quirks of the UK road network in that the quickest way to the North Lincolnshire coast is to head north up the M1 to near Sheffield, then take the M18 and the M180 eastbound. We drove up the motorway in the inside lane at a stately 60mph trying to save fuel, and arrived at the venue in good time. Chris' job today took him to within an hour of the venue so he called by to check that everything was well, stayed to catch the first set before heading back home to bed.

It was a small club, but began to fill even as we were setting up. We really could do with an empty roon for an hour or so in order to tidy up a few songs and rehearse a few new ones, but it was not to be this time. Word had got out that Nicki was in town, and soon they had to put out extra tables and chairs for the capacity crowd.

Like Dumbleton on Saturday, this was a listening club, with a good humoured crowd who'd turned up in Australian regalia with corks dangling from hats etc. Nicki soon had them singing and clapping along as we played three top quality sets. Once again Nicki brought the house down when she sang "Nutbush" and danced the routine with two of the guys from the club. Priceless.
We closed the show with "Waltzing Matilda" and it brought the audience to their feet. Even the die hards who only like "pure" country music (whatever that is) were won over. Everyone commented on a great show.
The organisers from two other local clubs in Grimsby and Scunthorpe were there. Now- if the three clubs could work together and put on a show in a bigger venue, we might get three times the people along, get three times the fee for the show, and not have to worry whether we'd run out of diesel on the way back. As it happens, we got back OK, but will have to fill up again before we head off to the Wirral for our next date.