May 28: It was a full house for a wonderful evening with Wayward Jane. The band played a mixture of American Old Timey tunes and songs, flavoured with their own unique Scottish and Irish influences. They also played their own tunes and songs such as The Flood written by Michael Starkey, who played fluid clawhammer banjo all night. Sam Gillespie, a consummate guitarist, who also played wooden flute and bouzouki, was the main vocalist and his high plangent tenor was an important feature of the night. He wrote several of the songs such as the beautiful Everything Changes, backed by perfect four part harmonies from the rest of the band.
Tara Cunningham on fiddle, trained in the Scottish tradition but also fluent in the Old Timey style, spent all night duetting with Michael Starkey on the banjo to great effect. Dan Abrahams on stand up bass and guitar added a mellow punch to the evening.

The band worked together intuitively and clearly enjoyed themselves greatly. This came across to the audience making the evening hugely entertaining. There were too many highlights to mention them all but the last anthemic song Liberty got the whole club singing and the encore Make Me a Pallet on Your Floor was a rousing example of the band’s unique approach. Mike Wareham

One of our floor singers that night was Phil Harrison. Phil has been very busy with other things lately, and hasn’t been able to come to the club for some time, and we were all very pleased to welcome him back, and to hear that he should be able to come more frequently again.