Feast of Fiddles set for Hastings and Emsworth dates

The Hastings show is at 7pm. Tickets £27.50 on 07970 010002 or https://wegottickets.com/event/635275. The Emsworth show is at 7.30pm. Tickets £27.50 on 01243 370501 or https://www.wegottickets.com/event/642384 https://wemsfest.com.

Born in Nettlebed on Valentine’s Day 1994 as a one-off concert, Feast of Fiddles is a band of friends that puts on a show of huge dynamic range performed with passion, joy and a liberal dose of fun, they promise.

This year fiddlers Garry Blakeley (Band of Two), Ian Cutler (Bully Wee), Marion Fleetwood, Tom Leary (Joe Brown), Brian McNeill (Battlefield Band) and Simon Swarbrick bring a wide range of fiddle-playing styles to the rock back-line, all held together by drummer Dave Mattacks.

Band founder member Hugh Crabtree, who plays the melodeon and sings as well as compering the show on the night, said: “Our birth was in 1994, and absolutely none of us thought that we would still be doing this 30 years later. There have been some personnel changes over the years, but essentially it has been the same band throughout. But it's only once a year plus a few festivals. It's not like we've been living in each other's pockets for 30 years!

“But I think of it as a three-legged stool, and I would say our three legs are the people, the music and the money. The most important thing is the people, I would say, a group of people that really get on with each other. But then a very, very close second comes the music though there are people in the band who would put the music first and the people second. And then comes the money.

“We are unsupported and we don't have a record label or a sugar daddy. We're a cottage industry, and what we have to do is to make sure that our income marginally exceeds our expenses. Generally we manage to do that though this year is different. I would definitely say it's harder this year. Just coming out of Covid there was a bit of a flush of people wanting to go out but it's different now. Audiences are getting harder to persuade to come out. The bookings these days are so much later, and with so many other concerns for people, like the geo-political situation and the cost of living, people just forget to book and they forget to enjoy themselves.

“So yes, it's definitely much harder this year and it's proving quite difficult to find the audiences especially as people are booking later and later which is quite a worry for the promoters and the venues and I think that just exacerbates the situation. But broadly we come through – though it does worry me that the third leg of the school is the money. It would only take one financial failure to reduce the enthusiasm of some of the band members!

“We have had to put some of our gigs into special needs and really pull out all the stops that we possibly could but generally we manage it. We had one furniture sale last year in Manchester where we probably sold only a couple of dozen tickets but then we realised how lacking the efforts were by the venue. The box office was closed on the day of the show!

“But we look on the bright side. It's going to be a great tour. We're really lucky that probably two-thirds of our concerts are venues that we go to reasonably regularly and where we are confident that we can get an audience. And also we know that you can't rest on your laurels. We take quite seriously the fact that all good things come to an end but also the fact that if you want to make them last longer, you've got to refresh things if you want to keep them going. We do take seriously the need to introduce new material every year and to refresh our sets but we do also recognise that there are things that people will always want to hear.”