The Yuletide Serenaders finally made it onto the streets of Lichfield, and our efforts were richly rewarded by very kind Christmas shoppers – £115 in notes alone! – which will all go to the Crisis At Christmas fund which helps to bring some hope and succour to the homeless at this time of year.

The donations seemed to drop into the hatbox at a quicker rate when we were not playing – but the band is trying not to take it personally!

Many thanks to Harriet for joining us on vocals and ukulele for a few numbers and to Jill for strong singing.

The band – or as many of us who manage to get out of bed and into town before noon – will be doing its ‘massy thing tomorrow, that’s 16 December according to the Julian calendar, from around 10.30 in the a.m. If we’re not outside the Samuel Johnson Birthplace Museum in Market Street, cock an ear for us in a neighbouring Lichfield street, perhaps not far from the Guildhall in Bore Street, for example.

And don’t forget, if you want to do your own body and soul a favour you can join us in song (lyric books provided).

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!