Nantwich Jazz & Blues Festival

We've had a FANTASTIC weekend here in Nantwich!

The warm sunny weather helped of course but Nantwich certainly know how to put on a music festival.  We started off on Friday when we were joined by our boating friend David who came to stay

We'd bought wristbands which gave us admission to all of the events over the weekend and at £7 each for 4 days that must be the best bargain entertainment ever.  Unfortunately David couldn't stay for the whole weekend due to family commitments but he seemed to enjoy being dragged round town from pub to pub venue to venue. Luckily he has the same taste in rock music as us.

Roger and I both love live music but, as I've complained about on here before, most venues seem to think that unless the music is warping your ear drums it's not any good and at our age we've already got enough tinnitus thank you. Our future daughter-in-law is an audiologist and she suggested we invest in a pair of concert ear plugs which have transformed gigs from torture to absolute pleasure.

At £15 including postage from Ebay they are well worth investing in if you like going to live music venues. You can see them HERE

They certainly came into their own and we managed to see over 10 different bands at various venues over the weekend. Our absolute favourite was a group called WhiskeyHead who we saw at The Bowling Green pub on Monday afternoon. We didn't actually need the ear plugs for this band as we sat outside in the beer garden soaking up the sunshine and drinking Old Speckled Hen while we listened to them. We were also treated to a good display of jive dancing by 2 couples who clearly had been dancing together for a while and swopped partners without breaking a step. How I wish I could jive like that.....

Our first band of the weekend was The Milkmen at The Studio. They played classic rock and R & B and were superb

The Alex McKown Band, also at The Studio, were good but only played their own stuff which we didn't recognise

Not all venues needed a wristband to see the bands and the stage in the town square had quite a few groups on. It was good to be able to stand and soak up the sunshine while listening to the music - no ear plugs required.

The Railway Hotel across the other side of town (near Morrisons and Aldi) were holding an alternative - and free -  "Keep The Music Live" Festival and we watched a few bands over there.

Our favourite was "Tumblin Dice"which was a Rolling Stones tribute band and the marquee was packed solid. We couldn't decide if the lead singer looked more like Mick Jagger or Michael Farage but he was very good.

We'd also booked extra tickets to see The Blues Band with Paul Jones at Nantwich Civic Hall as we listen to Paul Jones' blues programme on Radio 2 on Monday evenings and I'd wanted to see the band for ages. We weren't disappointed and considering the youngest member of the band is 68 they can certainly still play. One difference between them and the younger bands was that instead of wetting their vocal cords with beer they were swigging on bottles of water and cups of tea!

After last week's disastrous Sunday lunch at the Dusty Miller we had a really good one this week at The Crown Hotel who were major sponsors of the festival. I've marked The Crown in our book for future visits as we'd also had a really good lunch in there on Saturday with David. Two meals out in two days! I really felt like I was on holiday and I think Nantwich Jazz & Blues Festival will become a regular feature in our Spring calendar.

It's time to move on today, time to toss the coin and see which way we're going to go.............