It’s looking far too wet.

But we’re optimistic for Saturday 16 December!

…and don’t forget your brolly! For Folk On The Farm, that is. It’s sold out, and the weather is looking… well, weathery.

The Serenaders will be serenading the musicians and punters into the site at Woodhouse Farm, near Whittington, from about 11am and then intermittently (much like the showers) for the rest of the afternoon.

Hope to see you there. It’s this Sunday 17 September, in case you have no sense of time (much like the band… ho ho).

The Serenaders will be back in town – that’s Lichfield – tomorrow, Saturday 9 September, busking in Market Street outside the Samuel Johnson Birthplace Museum (opposite Waterstones). As the weather is forecast to be warm (I nearly wrote unseasonably warm there, which is ridiculous on the face of it but a lot nearer to the sad truth of an English summer), we will be playing a little earlier: between 10am and about 11.30am or when our voices and fingers give out, whichever comes sooner. I’m delighted to announce that, although we will be shy of uke maestro Ian Doleful and tambourine maestress Mandy Down-Heel, we will be delighted to welcome, on guitar, Phil OhNo. We might even be joined at some point by part-timer and complete diva Harriet Bleak.

And on Sunday 17 September we’ll be trying to squeeze in a song or two in between the proper musicians appearing at Folk On The Farm, the annual Lichfield Arts visit to the country as part of its Lichfield Festival of Folk. It’s at Woodhouse Farm and Gardens, the postcode is WS13 8QG, and all we hope for is that the rain will hold off and that we’ll see a few familiar faces there.

The line-up of proper musicians includes Farefield, Chase Mist, The Durkins and the community big band ASpire, which will include a couple of Wayside Serenaders pretending they know what’s going on.

For full details and booking (it’s £10.78 for adults, children under 12 free, which appears to include a barbecue), just click on the image above.

Blessed may be the cheesemakers. Or even the peacemakers!

Certainly, when it comes to busking, one of the Rev J. Olly Glum’s pet hates is amplifiers of any kind. So he laid down strict rules from the beginning for those poor souls who were press-ganged into being Wayside Serenaders: an electric cable, a device which had batteries, printed circuits of any kind, just the faint whiff of positive and negative terminals, was enough to put him in a semi-incoherent rage.

Then, in a moment of self-doubt, he wondered if he was being a bit harsh…

Thankfully, a book he was reading came to his aid and convinced him that his original gut feeling was the one to go with.

This is the late, very great art critic, novelist and man of wisdom John Berger quoting his friend Ken on a performance by musical hall artists Flanagan and Allen (Here Is Where We Meet. John Berger – Bloomsbury, 2005):

“The microphone is going to kill their art… They talk across the whole theatre and we’re in the middle of them. If they use a mike, this will stop and the public will no longer be in the middle. The secret of music hall artists is that they play defenceless, like we are. A player with a mike is armed!”

The Wayside Serenaders will remain “defenceless”, just like their audience!

Five of the seven Serenaders (two had left for more important business) bringing some suitably bathetic cheer to Market Street in Lichfield this morning.

Same old songs, however…

It’s been a quiet year so far for the Wayside Serenaders, with just one live appearance, but we abide in hope that, like the weather, things will hot up before too long. And with that in mind, we are busking outside the Samuel Johnson Birthplace in Market Street, Lichfield, between about 11am and 1pm, this Saturday, 19 August.

The weather is set fair, the band is now even bigger, and we look forward to seeing some friendly faces among the passers-by.

Here’s a little video reminder of some of the Serenaders’ abiding idiosyncrasies, including fumblingly ragged kazoo breaks, the very real sense that nobody has a clue what the Rev J. Olly Glum is going to do next, and a knock-knock joke without a punch line. Bob Dylan would be rolling in his grave but, luckily, he lives still!

The Wayside Serenaders are delighted to announce an addition to their number. Kate Sluggish has agreed to join the band as singer and bass drummer.

The group’s leader, the Rev J. Olly Glum, said in a prepared media statement: “Kate not only has a very striking (and encouragingly loud) voice and is a fine interpreter of a lyric, but she will also have a dramatic effect upon our reading on the ‘Decrepitometer’, the age-sensitive device which measures the ability of busking bands to remain upright and in full possession of their faculties while performing.”

Rev. Glum, who is rumoured by close associates of the band to rule it with an unashamedly ungloved iron fist, added: “Of course, Kate, in accordance with Wayside Serenaders policy, will be expected to perform with a handicap. In her case this is the playing of a bass drum, an instrument of which she has no experience at all. On the plus-side the drum will also act as a seat upon which to rest while performing.”

Like all prospective Serenaders, Kate had to pass a rigorous set of tests and exercises before being offered a role in the band. These included turning out at short notice in the depths of winter to sing archaic carols and laughing indulgently at the Rev Glum’s tedious jokes. She has often been taking pictures and videos of the band in performance, and the Rev was at pains to add that such signs of loyalty to the band’s mission should not in any way be seen as influential in his decision. “Such behaviour is certainly not an automatic ‘free pass’ to becoming a full-time member of the group. That would be to reward sycophancy,” he harrumphed, adding: “We’re not bloody politicians!”

The band hopes its full complement will be available on its next busking date, which is Saturday 19 August, between about 11am and about 1pm, outside the Samuel Johnson Birthplace Museum in Market Street, Lichfield.

Thunder and lightning forecast… so we’ve decided to stay indoors. Apologies to all our fans. 😉

As has become a tradition each July, the Wayside Serenaders are forming their own one-band fringe to the Fuse Festival in Beacon Park. We’ll be entertaining comers and goers on their way to the Fuse paddock and will probably be somewhere near the tennis courts between 2.30 and 3.30 this coming Saturday afternoon.

We understand thunder showers are forecast but our hopes are always set on sunshine; here we are singing about it (video courtesy Kate Slater):