News
March 2010
Allie
Keeping bands together has always been a serious challenge and when it’s a semi pro band playing at a pro level it becomes even more difficult. It is therefore a great testament to the members of Maurice and the Minors, Desperate Men and the John Richards band that they were together for so long and that there were relatively few changes in personnel. That becomes even more significant when you realise that three of the existing JRB were together in Maurice and the Minors in the 1980s and four of the five JRB were members of Desperate Men at some stage or another.
We were all therefore sad from a band perspective, but pleased for Allie, when she told us after Christmas, that she had been offered a new and very exciting post based in the north of England. Allie recorded her first CD with the JRB in 2004 and as much as we all wanted her to carry on, it quickly became obvious that we would not be able to drive the band forward as we want to with Allie so far away and giving her all to the new day job.
So we wish Allie all the very best for the future and great success with the new job and you can all catch up with her before she goes. She is playing all the gigs through to the Newhampton Acoustic Club on Saturday 19th June. That is the obvious last gig for Allie. It has been her local for some years and was the spiritual home of Desperate Men before the JRB started to practice in its upstairs room in 2004.
Julia
So given the news from Allie, John put the word around his friends on the West Midlands folk scene and three different people mentioned the same potential candidate. Given that John had met both Chris Drinan and Jim Sutton at the Woodman Folk Club in Kingswinford, in the 80s, it was even more significant that the potential candidate had become a regular visitor to the Woodman over the last year. John spoke to Paul Matthews, who with his wife Sue, is a regular singer at the Woodman and Paul endorsed everything else that John Had been told about the young candidate. Paul then mentioned the situation to the young lady concerned, she emailed John, they met, she met the rest of the band and played a few songs and the enthusiasm was unanimous.
The young lady concerned is Julia Disney, who some of you may also know as Julia Hares. Julia graduated from Dartington College, near Totnes, in 2008. She is an extremely talented singer songwriter who plays violin, piano and guitar and she won the Open Mic competition at Shrewsbury Folk Festival in 2009.
She admits that amongst the songs that she has written are a number of very sad and moving songs so we think she has definitely found the right band.
There are a number of other spooky coincidences but you can see them on Julia’s biography page.
Julia is already practicing with the band and will join the rest of us for the first time, alongside Allie, when we support Two Time Polka, from Ireland, on Friday 9th April at the Newhampton Arts Centre. Dave Jones, our great friend, and the thinking man’s drummer from Desperate Men is now the drummer with Two Time Polka and we are all really looking forward to seeing him and his great new band. Julia will also feature in the Help for Heroes concert at Rowington Village Hall and on Allie’s final night at the Newhampton Acoustic Club on Saturday 19th June.
We know that you’ll all make Julia very welcome when you come to gigs and we hope that she is with us for a long time to come, and that you will really enjoy, a very exciting addition to the band and some excellent new songs.
Julia playing with the band for the first time in the Newhampton practice room.
Either Julia is really pleased about joining the band or she’s doing an impression of Tommy Cooper.
Not like that, like that!
Julia’s Biog
Julia began her musical journey at 6 years of age, firstly taking up the piano and soon (much to her mother’s dismay) moving onto the violin. She was classically trained in both instruments for a number of years and experienced her first taste of folk music playing with her mum’s band, ‘The Crag Band’. She always had a love for writing songs and although at a young age they were all mainly cheesy love songs, they were the start of something which has gone on to become a large part of Julia’s musical life!
Julia graduated at Dartington College of Arts in 2008 after becoming one of the regular session musicians of the year. She moved back to the West Midlands in September 2008 and during a period of looking for work, used her time productively and spent hours writing songs and going to local singers nights. From January 2009 she has been working with singer songwriter Tim Judson who she had met at one of those singers’ nights at the long established Woodman Folk Club in Kingswinford in the West Midlands. They have become a well known duo on the local folk scene and continue to collaborate.
Julia also won the prestigious open mic competition at Shrewsbury Folk Festival in August 2009, as a solo singer songwriter, and is really looking forward to playing at the festival this year, as a result.
In February 2010 one of the regulars at the Woodman Folk Club told Julia that Allie Fellows, the accordion player with the John Richards Band, was relocating and having to leave the band, and that John was looking for a fiddle or accordion player to replace her. Apparently, when John had been asking friends in the local folk clubs if they had seen any likely candidates three different people had mentioned Julia so he had asked his friends at the Woodman about her. Julia emailed John and (after numerous emails and a very successful jam session!) she joined the John Richards band and is looking forward to plenty of gigs and working with experienced, talented musicians!
What Julia didn’t realise at this time was the number of unusual (even spooky) coincidences about her joining the band. She went to school in Sedgley and so did John (a few years before) She graduated at Dartington College, a stone’s throw from John’s home in South Devon. Two of the other band members were first recruited by John, to join his band Maurice and the Minors in the 1980s, after he had met them at the Woodman Folk Club. Dave Brookes, the lead singer of Maurice and the Minors, was one of the judges at the Shrewsbury Festival competition that Julia won. Julia’s, mum had actually spoken to John about her at the band’s Woodman gig in 2009. Finally, Julia writes some very sad and moving songs, and the band expect them to fit in perfectly with John’s general output.