Diana Stones Blog

A Pink Hippo says: I had quite a fun weekend;

Saturday May 8th was a great night at the Blues Room in St Albans backing the rather good >> Earl Jackson which was basically a Rock & Roll night. We did an opening Elephant Shelf set and get Earl up to keep the folks rocking till about 12:30 so another 3 hour set fueled only by 2 pints  of draft Guinness. A great bunch of people there and I think they really enjoyed it, and they were up and dancing right till the end. We also had a guest appearance from Rollo Marquee a very good blues harp player who will be playing at the Blues Room soon too.

Sunday May 9th of to ST FM in Burnham Essex to do a live to air set with Elephant Shelf .

We did four songs, with an interview with the band sandwiched in-between.  We were on the Sunday night show with Veteran Essex musician, journalist and broadcaster Tim Aves ‘Blues is back’ show.

Elephant Shelf viewed from the Piano at the ST-FM studio

We met Tim previously when he played with the shelf at the Blues Room. Tim  is a very well-known, award-winning figure on the national UK blues scene, as a performer, writer and event organiser.He sings and plays harmonica and guitar and spent 17 years on the road, clocking up more than 3,000 gigs across the UK and continental Europe in the 1980s and 1990s with legendary Essex rhythm’n'blues band AUTOMATIC SLIM, who shared stages with a huge range of major artistes, including Status Quo and Dr Feelgood. He later spent a further 13 years fronting the highly-regarded (but sadly, now disbanded) Texas blues outfit, THE ROCKIN’ ARMADILLOS (The band also featured Saint FM Rock Show co-host Paul Lester on drums and Gasbags co-presenter Jane English on vocals.)
We enjoyed the experience and we hope to be back down in Burnham on Crouch in the not too distant future . The live sound was mixed by Pete Crisp who engineers at the St Peters Studio and who also gave us a copy of the tracks that went to air.  Then another Real Ale and a Veggie burger, and off home to London.

The Cleavage of Death circa 2006, originally uploaded by diana99.

Another Blast from the past, filmed in a Pub in Holloway.
Gosh it’s all rather different now.

Its a blast from the past. Elephant Shelf back in 2008 I think at  the Unicorn Camden

 

 Just Another Someone at The Unicorn Camden : Play Now | Play in Popup | Download

Delta-Ladies-sketch by the other Roger at the Cats Back Putney

Its not my bass I am just keeping it warm for a friend.

Diana & Betty Boop have discourse

One of my favorite venues to play at.

Well we got to the gig despite the snow and everything else. We arrived on the Friday nighty just in time to get food as it was thrown in with the accomodation, but it was only availble between 5pm & 7pm so waving our Butlins ration cards we dived in. Then as we were not plying we watched some of the bands, we caught some of Paul Jones with The Blues Band and also Ben Waters who is a very good Boogie Pianist. Then we went back to one of the smaller stages to watch The  Mick Rutherford Band who were very entertaining and  Micks legware was also quite exotic.

We had a couple of drinks and watched the Bare Bones Boogie Band who may well be playing at the Blues Room in St Albans in the not too distant future. We wandered around a bit and looked at the Blues Matters stand and had a cup of tea and went to bed.  We got up on Staurday too late for the Breakfast and determined that we would go in to Skegy and get something there. It was still very cold but not quite as bad as the night before so I nipped out and took a couple of pictures of the snow then we got in the van to drive in to town. Of course the van would not start and needed a call to the AA, the guy came out did some checks and as expected it turned out to be the battery which had gone from being aged and frail to expiring in the embrace of the North Sea chill.
So he got the van started and I followed him into town to get another battery which he fitted and then I went back to the camp.

Skegness Rock & Blues

Our name in Print

We had been asked to take part in a Jam session to promote the bands show that evening but circumstances were against us. The rest of the band turned up in good spirits having had a reasonable journey.   We had a sound check at about05:30 which was done very well by the on site sound guys who were real pros and got us a very good sound onstage mix as well as off.  We had decided as it was a new audience that we would open with a couple of full on tunes Snakebite followed by Morning Letter and keep the pace up up as it was a straight through 90 minute set.

After the sound check the Robbie(bass) Rosie (vocals)and Terry(Dums) went off to eat and we went for an interview with a Welsh Blues radio station as a couple of the guys had called us a little earlier as Vicky had been in contact with them earlier in the year. We had a very good talk and tried to share some of the insanity that is Elephant Shelf , what makes us tick and all about the songs as Elephant Shelf is a very distinctive band on the circuit particularly as it features Violin/fiddle and keyboards as a lot of the other bands tend to be Guitar and blues harp. Also we only play a couple of covers in our set at most and they are often quite different in approach thn the way they are normally performed. There was just time to grab a quick bit before we got on stage at 8.30 and as the newbies we had the opening slot.  We did a very high impact set and it was great to have room to move around on stage too unusually I did not have a drink on stage but as the beer was  a bit crap perhaps that was not so important,  at least I could not trip over it. we got the audience on our side fairly quickly and I did my Vocal number Just another Someone to a pretty good reaction too. I wondered how it would go as its  a mile down the road from blues and features a Violin solo, but it  came across OK and the duet with Rosie was really powerful too.
Also on it’s first gig with the band the Pink Hippo who sat on top of the monitor watching the set..
We also managed to get some of Gary Boners Roadhouse to watch the set and enjoyed it, and as they have played Colne and various other festivals quite a few times that was good to know. Alan from Blues Matters also made it to the show and was very impressed which was also very encouraging.  The set was really tight and there were none of the little disasters that plagued us at the Boogallo weekend last weekend. We also met a guy from France who was a radio  DJ and was also not very

far from Mazamet where we will be staying for as we have 3 gigs with the Delta Ladies Duo which we are using to also help sell the  Band in France.  So all in all not too bad a day.  We watched the Mustangs who were on after us, had a couple more drinks and chatted to one of the Girls who sings with Roadhouse then tea and bed.

Sunday morning was fairly uneventful as was the trip home, though I was a bit knackered by the time we got back .

Vicky by the Blues Matters Stand

Chilly

Cool Ducks

The Excerise Yard

Northern Skys