Flook line up Emsworth date

Brian Finnegan, whistles and flutes, said: “It is great to be back. We haven’t played Emsworth for quite a long time and I think sometimes when they’re working out our tours we start somewhere that’s really quite unique and special just as a way of easing ourselves back in again.”

As ever it will be quite some undertaking with the members of the band coming from all different directions, Brian from Belfast and the others from the West Coast of Ireland, London and Bath.

“We did a tour of Denmark and a few smaller runs of dates so we have dipped our toe into it all again, but this will be our first tour for a while in this part of the world.”

When the pandemic came they were on a high: “We had released our album the year before in 2019 and we had a lot of things booked in. Luckily we managed to do the album launch tour and get a good amount of work done but to be honest Flook are used to sitting out long periods of time. We took an extended break in about 2012 when we decided we wanted to spend more time with kids and other things that were happening. We had prioritised Flook for so long that it was almost like we needed to refresh ourselves and so we just took time out and we never put pressure on ourselves to come back again. We just knew that would happen naturally, that the day would come when we would decide to regroup. It was just a question of waiting for the right moment and it felt great when we did. But things had changed when we came back. A lot of things had developed in the way music was shared and that side of things. It all felt very different.

“And then the pandemic break was difficult because we were reinvigorated having just had the time off and having released the new album but you just had to think that it was one of those things.

“You either got very fearful and anxious about it all or you just went with the flow. It was actually a good opportunity to be home with the family and I did a solo album during the pandemic. It was actually my third but it was the biggest and was quite a major strategic undertaking.

“It was all done remotely. There were 23 musicians from all parts of the world and no two of us were ever together.

“It was all done at home and it was actually quite refreshing and liberating and I think maybe that could be the future of recording. The cost is an issue and I think this just might be the way ahead. I think there are a lot of musicians that just never had the laundry of recording and how to do it but they reeducated themselves and it was good. When you’re doing it that way I think it just gives you more time to get under the skin of new material in a way that you can’t necessarily do in the studio. So I don’t know... maybe that side of music will change.”

But the actual joy of performing live never will: “You just can’t beat that experience. You get that great feeling in the room when you’re all together again at last and I think we can sense a real ravenous appetite for music now. People are just really frustrated and just wanting to get out there. I think people at gigs now are now so much more engaged with the music, much more deeply engaged than they ever were before.

“Music has got a an incredible power of connecting us with the softer sides of our hearts. For the past two years we have been living in our heads, I think we’d almost forgotten how the soft parts of us feel and how much we have been longing to reconnect and I think that’s what music does. Maybe we just needed the break to realise just how much we need it in our lives.”