You can’t generally speaking walk in someone else shoes they say. Perhaps you can try but mostly its not a good idea if you can avoid it. I had been trying to do exactly that for the last couple of years subconsciously since the loss of my co-conspirator and leading light of the Delta Lady’s. I though we might be able to keep something going but it was not really ever going to work without that unique individual. So despite the help from others (notably Lorraine Lucas who stepped up for a while during a time when I was basically still pretty much deep in shock and traumatised) once covid stopped gigs in March 2020 the spark such as it was really could not be rekindled. There is one final Delta Ladies Album which Vicky Martin had mixed. It’s my hope to release this as a final testament as it were. Its been hard to come to grips with much that’s happened since April 2019. I have lost a few others along the way since then sadly. Vicky’s partner Ralph perhaps most notably who was very supportive and a good friend to me who died unexpectedly in November 2020.
I have continued with my solo musical endeavours which were always separate to my work as part of the Delta Ladies and which had been going on for a a while before both Elephant Shelf and subsequently the Delta Ladies, The last proper Delta ladies gig after Vicky’s death was at the Retreat in Reading in on Saturday February 8th 2020 (16 years of solid gigging). Since then I have also been working on a couple of projects with Jon Bickley (a singer songwriter) mostly remotely until the last couple of months. Also one one or two other remote collaborations. I do miss people and just making music with people, but I have lost the kind of confidence needed to start from scratch.
It’s been nice to see many friends starting to pick up where they left off and take their acts back out to gig again. The lockdown and much else has sadly left me in a position where I do not see much of an opportunity personality to be able to play live music at present.
Maybe at some point that will change again, but the magics been lost for the moment and new spells perhaps must be cast by some new sorcerer. Perhaps some other dawn will light the way. If not it was good while it lasted.
“Why do you go away? So that you can come back. So that you can see the place you came from with new eyes and extra colors. And the people there see you differently, too. Coming back to where you started is not the same as never leaving.”
― A Hat Full of Sky