Voicemale - ….and 3 years later!!!! Mine kære herrer og trubadurkolleger

As well as being a week of Remembrance, this week marked 3 years of Eddie Howe ⬛️⬜️⬛️⬜️⬛️ being in charge of the toon - but more importantly 3 years since the appointment of wor Jon as Musical Director of Voicemale.

A bit of a history lesson - Voicemale was started in 2000 by Sandra Kerr and thrived under the musical leadership of Graham Stacy. Many years later Covid hit and we had to stop meeting for close on 18 months. When we were able to resume in October 2021 our numbers had reduced to around 12 members, down from over 20 pre Covid. At the same time, after over 20 years in charge, Graham felt he’d done his bit and retired. Enter stage left a young whipper snapper called Jon Doran who had never run a choir before but who we knew as a great professional folk singer 🎶🎵!!! But hasn’t he been brilliant, what a motivator!! - and look at us now with around 30 members, plenty of gigs and happy faces every Wednesday night.

Well over 120 practice sessions and 24 gigs later the choir is bouncing - by the end of the year it’ll be 29 gigs since the post Covid restart🥳.

A veritable phoenix from the ashes story - thanks to Jon and the enthusiasm of all you guys in helping to get Voicemale back where it belongs - but our ethos is surely that we’re still a bunch of lads enjoying ourselves🍺, enjoying the company of good friends and singing some great music🎵🎶.

So we had a bit of singing last night - canny harmonies. We’ve only one more Wednesday before our Hexham gig on Sunday 24th so I’m hoping Jon will confirm the set list early doors so we can practice in the shower. With our recent concentration on Xmas songs I suspect we’ll all need to dust off our brain cells to recall the words of songs on our normal repertoire!!! Plenty of warbling required in the shower 🚿 🎵.

And talking of warbling in the shower - it was those very words on the website which attracted our latest recruit Patrick to VM. Patrick joined us last night and didn’t seem phased at all!!! Welcome Patrick, we know you’ll enjoy the camaraderie of VoiceMale - you’ve just made 30 new friends.

For those who missed out last night on buying Jons new CD I’m sure he’ll be bringing more next week - £10 to VM members - its worth buying a CD player just to hear it😂😂😂!!

Ok that’s enough. The weather seems set to get colder so get your Logs to Burn - I’m told ash is the best😀.

Have a great weekend - blue skies to all - be kind to each other and larn yer words!!! Onwards and upwards Voicemale 🥳🎵🎶👍🏼 🚀🎈

Cheers

Chris