North American Celtic group Còig play Chidham

Còig deliver an exhilarating mix of traditional tunes, lively instrumentals and contemporary songs performed on more than a dozen instruments (vocals, fiddles, guitar, banjo, mandolin, viola, bouzouki, whistles and more).

The band features the fiddling and step-dancing duo of Chrissy Crowley and Rachel Davis, the musical musings of multi-instrumentalist Darren McMullen, and guest musician Thierry Clouette.

Darren, who is based in Nova Scotia, said: “It is going to be our first time in a while in the UK since right back before the whole world shut down. We had actually just finished a UK tour and we went to Australia, and we were halfway through the tour when everything went into lockdown. We had to get home as fast as we could. It was kind of scary. We were halfway around the world and everybody was starting to panic. We didn’t really know what was happening. There was not any day when everybody said this is it. Some people were starting to close down. Some people were saying let’s keep going, but it did get scary, but luckily Chrissy’s sister worked for an airline company and she helped us get plane tickets sorted out at a time when lots of people were waiting hours and hours on the phone.

“We were really fortunate. Once we got home we were not allowed to leave the house for two weeks (because of quarantine), and really we just stayed around. We enjoyed it at first just a tiny little bit but then it did get scary because we had no way to make our living and no way that we could know when we could start booking things again. We did a little bit of house renovation stuff. Other members of the band got into some schooling and did other things, and everybody just found ways to get busy.

“Rachel and I live together so we were able to do some music together. Chrissy did some with her friends but our other member isn’t even in the same province. But we were able to film bits and put them together and it felt like everyone was working together. And then the first time we did a show, with the reduced audience and all the distancing, it just felt so great to be playing again and we were almost tearing up it felt so wonderful to be performing. Playing in front of the screen just absolutely isn’t the same thing as actually having an audience in front of you and I don’t think I will ever feel the same about it again. I don’t think I’ll ever take things for granted in the way that I did when for years it was really easy and it just felt normal to be doing concerts. I think I will always now be aware of just how fortunate we are to be able to make music and also just how important it is to be able to play music in front of people.

“When we were doing the online things we were getting so many messages from people saying thank you so much for doing that. You could see that listening to music really mattered to people.”