The set up at the old Bridge Folk Club was worse - you got up, stood on the floor, faced the audience, yet you had the residents on a raised stage behind you (Ray Fisher, Pete Woods, Tom Gilfellon, Johnny Handle, Colin Ross...). Weird!

I'm not so keen on getting up to sing - I find it perverse & unnatural (unless it's a gig, when there's a whole different set of rules). PA systems just add to the horrors of that. Performing in festivals you can't avoid it, but having watched Jordi Savall & Hesperion XXI the other week playing live to an audience of 1000 in a concert hall with no PA, I see no point why people should insist on using one in the back room of a pub or other small venue. I really regret using the PA at a couple of recent gigs we did which really fucked things up.

I like using live electronics at an acoustic volume, and might occasionally dream of doing this in a singaround, though I'm never without my trusty electro-Shruti Box. I found it amusing one night at a PA-folk club when one resident objected to my electro drones as being offensive to purists (like him; for purist read tosser). If I could afford it, I'd get a set of Northumbrian small-pipes made sans chanter just to use as drones for my loops, FX & electronics. Could I play the fiddle with that too, I wonder?