Mary Humphreys and Anahata

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13 March

We've had a weekend at WildGoose Studios adding instrumental accompaniments to an album Jack Crawford is recording. It's the first time we've been asked to do all the instrumental bits for someone else's album, and with cello, several melodeons, concertinas, banjo and one or two vocal harmonies I think we've created some quite satisfying variety that will break up a recording of otherwise unaccompanied singing. Look out for Jack - lovely voice and great songs!

We've just had a last-minute booking for Court Sessions Traditional music Club which has been out of action for a couple of months. Now they've found a new venue (actually one they've used before but the pub's been refurbished) and they're doing their best to hit the ground running. If you're within reach of South London do come along and support a good club. It's every Friday at the Selkirk, Selkirk Road, Tooting, London SE17 0ES. We're there on March 28.

We're ploughing though an old manuscript book of tunes - William Clark of Feltwell - trying to decipher them, find some interesting tunes andf transcribe them in ABC. There's a few goodies there and we'll be using them in festival tune workshops and our day of workshops at Lewes on September 20.

9 January 2008 - Belated New Year Greetings and a Mailing List

A happy new year (what's left of it...) to all our readers.

We've just sent off our first email newsletter. Some of you have subscribed to our list by filling in a form at a club or festival, others got put on automatically if you ordered a CD from us, and now you can also subscribe on line. See the new mailing list page for the subscription form and to find out what's involved. Very simple and safe - you can get taken off again if you change your mind, we don't give your email address away and we will rarely mail you more often than every three months!

We're just about to embark on our most organised tour yet:
Thursday Jan 10 - Maidenhead folk club
Friday Jan 11 - Cheltenham Folk Club
Sunday Jan 13 - Folk on The Moor, near Plymouth
- and on Saturday we'll be taking a break visiting friends in Cornwall!

Links on this year's gigs page.

7 September - Post-Festival Recovery

I'm pleased to report that we've survived playing far more festivals in a short space of time than we've ever done before. It only took about a week to recover...

Recently we spotted a brilliant quote from Nigel Spencer, posted on the fRoots board, under the unlikely topic of "Acid Folk":

"the three CDs by Mary Humphreys and Anahata are about the most exciting thing I've heard since I discovered the Velvet Underground..."

Also Anahata is pleased to have got a favourable mention in Andy Turner's review of the EFDSS Hard Core English CD set. We have copies of both the book and CDs for sale, and many have gone, especially when we've run tune workshops at festivals.

2 July - We're on MySpace

We finally got around to putting up a MySpace profile on http://www.myspace.com/maryanahata with 4 full streaming music tracks (currently all from Fenlandia) and a gradually expanding clutch of friends. We're already getting surprise visitors making nice comments about the music so it must be worth it.

We're also busy putting together Mary's presentation on song collecting in Cambridgeshire, which she'll be doing at Whitby Folk Week and hopefully elsewhere. This will be a laptop-and-projector total multimedia experience with live performances of songs too.

Also in the works is a book of tunes to go with various workshops we'll be doing at festivals.

13 May - Radio Britfolk

Radio Britfolk has some terrific folk programmes on it, available for you to play for free any time of the day. The station needs your support in order to remain self sufficient. You can help by

• joining, which gives you access to extra features
• buying albums by your favorite artists
• Paying for a sponsorship advert which appears on the home page.

All our albums are now available for purchase via the Radio Britfolk site at the same price as you can buy them here.

13 April - Taplas Review and Article

Another first for us - an article in Taplas magazine, and our names mentioned on the front cover! In it Anahata is quoted as saying that we are planning to make a CD of Welsh music. We'd better do something about it - there's always a few people who ask why we don't do more Welsh songs.

Also a very nice review of Fenlandia, from Mick Tems, with the inevitable emphasis on the small amount of Welsh material that found its way on to the CD, on a label that specializes in English music!

23 March - Airplay!

Mary was interviewed on the phone for BBC Radio York on Monday, and Michael Brothwell played three tracks, two from Fenlandia and one from Floating Verses.

We've just heard from Verity Sharp that she's "very much enjoying" Fenlandia and will be playing The Nutting Song (a version of the Nutting Girl) on next Tuesday's Late Junction on BBC Radio 3.

7 March - Riverside Feedback

Feedback from the Suffolk Folk Riverside event: one couple who came to our workshop said it was "one of the best we've been to for a long time". More of the same at St Albans on the afternoon of Saturday 24th March. Several other enthusiastic emails from participants in the Riverside folk day, about the whole event.

5 March

We've just taken part in Suffolk Folk's day of folk music at the Riverside Centre, Stratford St Andrew. We ran a tunes workshop and did a spot in the afternoon concert. I've found that teaching tunes two bars at a time (with endless repetition of each 2 bar phrase, then 4 bar and 8 bar sections) seems to be a really good way of getting tunes to stick and developing some muscle memory. Several people came up afterwards to say they enjoyed it and found it a good format. This is very encouraging as we haven't done many workshops and we're never sure how well they go down. There'll be another at St. Albans on 24 March when we're there with CHARM. Note CHARM are doing concert performances on 23rd March at Halesworth New Cut Arts Centre and St Albans the next day, 24 March.

We've been contacted by Taplas Magazine to say the're going to run a mini-feature on us, and there'll be a review of the Fenlandia album too.