Again this year at Sir Harry Smith Community College from 8:00pm till 11:30pm this time with Steamchicken and caller Pete Rees.

Tickets with be available from 1st October 2008 and are £8.50. The box office number is 01733 204055, if you would rather write the address is Whittlesea Straw Bear Festival Tickets, 4 Delph Street, Whittlesey, Peterborough, PE7 1QQ. Cheques to be made payable to Whittlesea Straw Bear Festival and please include a stamped addressed envelope.

Steamchicken

The Great White Steamchicken were a small band with a big name formed by harmonica whiz Ted Crum 15 years ago when he quit full time membership of Peeping Tom.

He linked up with crazed ragtime mandolin player Bill Pound and keyboardist Andrew Sharpe to form a three piece that built up a good reputation through solid gigging in the 90's, many festivals and a well received CD “Never Mind the Dots” (“Good Noisy Fun” Froots)

The band expanded in 2003 to include Mandy Sutton (tenor sax), Will Pound (percussion) and Matt Crum (soprano sax) and Simon Burrell (trombone & tuba) in 2005.

Intro's are simple and unfussy; the bass line shows the feet where to go. Live arrangements are designed to keep the first few times through the tune clear and uncluttered to give the caller space, entirely unphased by a request to do another 8 bars to allow the caller to catch up. A large, well-tested set list built up over years enables the caller to call the dances he/she wishes. Only when the dance is established does improvisation creep in; well-known folk, blues and jazz melodies are the foundation for some fabulous soloing by Matt in particular.

Their current CD Wingin is mostly English folk dance tunes and a smattering written in that style, but with Blues and Jazz tunings and keys to folk melodies used as a base for improvisation.

Popular with callers and dancers Steamchicken has emerged as one of the most exciting and in demand e-ceilidh bands around.

Pete Rees

Pete grew up in Bristol and, when he was a child, his mother joined a local morris side. He’d often go and watch them at dance outs and decided it was something he wanted to try, so he joined Ashley’s Rise, a junior morris team in Bristol, when he was eight.  “There I met a couple of other lads who were my age and who came from a very folky family.  Over the following years I went away to a number of folk festivals with them, which is where I was introduced to other bits of the folk world, including ceilidhs.”

Pete always enjoyed ceilidh dancing, and when he was about fifteen, he was at a Folk Around Bristol ceilidh with the band Pepper in the Brandy and caller Gordon Potts. Gordon had spotted me messing about doing a kind of throat swing with one of my mates, and I stuck in his mind.  After the ceilidh, Gordon sent an email to the ceilidh organiser, suggesting that Pepper in the Brandy needed a much younger caller:  Gordon wrote, “The chap with the sideburns doing the throat swing, he could do it!”

Pete says, “I was lucky to call with a number of high profile bands very early in my calling career, which led to me being seen by more and more promoters and organisers”.

Pete calls for a lot of mixed audiences which is typical for ceilidh series, “It can present a challenge as you need to keep things simple enough for beginners, but challenging enough for experienced dancers”.

Pete’s been writing a lot of new dances over the last few months so look out for some new dances over the next year!

Many thanks to English Folk Dance & Song Society for permission to use this extract from the Autumn 2008 Edition of English Dance & Song and photograph used by courtesy of Derek Schofield. www.efdss.org