Live Music in Hitchin, Herefordshire. Today was the wedding of Chris & Crystal, set in the town of Hitchin, Hertfordshire at the local village hall where an outdoor wedding celebration would see around 100 guests of friends and family join in for this momentous and joyous occasion.
Last year we performed our regular slot at Wurzledubz VW festival in Somerset. Chris was catering for the festival with his culinary skills. Preparing slow cooked pulled pork for the weekend with his unique brand of Barbecue Sauce. It was of course divine. After our performance Chris booked us for his would be wedding to his partner Crystal, a genuine lovely couple and decent guy by all accounts.
Our journey to Hitchin set in rural Hertfordshire meant travelling down a few days before the wedding. We camped in the van on the M1 at Toddington services. We decided to do a spot of busking in Hitchin the day before the wedding. Not a place that’s probably on anyone’s radar. Although it seems that Hitchin has its own success story in the music business in the form of James Bay.
The town itself isn’t that large. It was our first endeavor busking in Hitchin so as with any new town we didn’t know what to expect. We are happy to report that this is a busking friendly town. There is a small pedestrianised and market area. The town welcomes buskers by hosting a busking weekend once a year.
The day had started out well. The sun was beaming down. Sun lotion now applied we set about playing. It wasn’t long before we attracted the attention of the organisers of the busking festival. Approaching us they took our business card and said they would be in touch.
Next up was a Hari-Krishna band complete with bongo drums and orange robes. They took over the market Square for a good half an hour disabling our busking completely. These wondering minstrels although peaceful their message may be, drowned us out completely. A shared public space sees all kinds of events happening in towns and cities. We waited it out in the shade feeling quite dizzy from the relentless sunshine beaming down on us.
Afterwards having left some sanctified raisins in our case they left the town and we finished up our set. It was a really hot day so we went back to the car park and rested up from the intense sun. tired from the exhaustive heat of the day it became apparent we left our flask lid back in the town, oops.
The next day back in Hitchin and after a warm night at a Bulgarian campsite (people were camping out at the service station on a small piece of grass in a tent, washing lines and all) we set for the village hall. When we arrived, the sun was beaming down it must of been around 25 degrees already. It became apparent that our setup location was against a white wall in the heat of the sun. As we setup and arranged the hey bales around us the band for the night had been rehearsing inside the village hall. The band called Roadrunner featured five guys. One of whom, the lead singer was James Bay’s brother.
As the guests started to arrive from the local church by foot we started to play to the guests before the arrival of the bride and groom. The wedding was geared up for outdoors with the bar, gazebo, crazy golf and a 4ft log with nails and a hammer. The nail game was a great addition to the games in that you had to hit the nails into the log least times as possible whilst having shots. It proved to be very popular with random cheers.
After a while the bride and groom arrived. Crystal looked absolutely stunning and Chris was looking alot different from our last meeting. He looked very dapper indeed. Such a lovely chilled out couple with a lovely group of friends and family. Taking the day in his stride Chris seemed very relaxed and causal about the whole day. Taking care of the food and the guests. Our second set would be 4 hours later so we stuck around and had been invited to try something to eat. Sheltering inside from the roasting hot sunshine. The weather was lovely for Chris & Crystal’s wedding, they had been blessed with wall to wall sunshine.
We loaned our amplifier to the lovely couple for the speeches. So after the speeches and toasts to the newly married couple we nipped in to grab the amplifier in stealth mode and returned to perform our final set.
As everyone had been drinking most of the afternoon as soon as we started to play the guests were up dancing and the evening guests started to arrive. The interactive percussion was going down very well as all the guests banged away on the tambourines. We noticed one little one taking the instruments out of the case and hiding them in random places. It was a game of hunt the instrument when our set had finished. Luckily we retrieved them all back as the other children helped us to collect them. One little boy had been particularly keen with the cow bell and it had been dragged around on the tarmac for most of the afternoon. It now had a lovely silver finish and I don’t think a sandblaster could have done a better job.
We played till about 8pm then it was time for Roadrunner to start their set inside. They sounded fantastic although everyone was still simmering down from the heat of the day. A lot of people remained outside where we were playing which can’t be helped but can be quite frustrating for a band. We received a great many compliments from the guests who had taken quite a few business cards. We packed up and headed towards a beautiful sunset with a 5 hour journey ahead of us.
Huge congratulations to a wonderful couple. Chris & Crystal we wish you all the love and happiness for your future together. Thank you so much for asking us to be a part of your special day and for making us feel so welcome.
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