An Evening with Friends

The other reason I spent Bonfire Night at home was because some friends of ours, brothers Karl and Alvin Allison, were in the area to play an evening of songs from an album they produced recently, 'Songs that No one Taught Us'.   On a Sunday afternoon, once church was over, the crew set to re-shuffling the room, trailing cable and setting up impressive looking switchboards with lots of shiny sliders on them.

Here's what I was put in charge of...

Needless to say, I enjoyed that job!

The Allison's have a background in the Salvation Army, but this album may not be every traditionalist's cup of tea!  It's a lot more current and energetic, with elements of rock music (I can post a large number of photos from their days in a rock band with my father, who was and still is very much a drummer!), pop, ballads and urban as well as the brass band you might expect to hear (one that come to mind is about their childhood Sunday School teacher, which includes audience participation!)   Actually, several of the songs had a comic element, with audience members on stage, hugging each other and singing along, and some short skits between songs and some props to keep us on our toes.  Karl (on the right) does the majority of the singing, while Alvin (left) is a dab-hand on the keyboards, and provides the harmonies.  

The night was entitled 'An Evening with Friends' and that's exactly what I feel I had.  The overall atmosphere was as if I'd popped round a mate's house and we'd just got talking about what made them tick; their history, the things and people they cared about, and the beliefs they'd built their lives upon.  The kind of stuff that really lets you get to know someone.  All contained in some musical chat with a cup of piping coffee and some rather awesome chunky-choc-chip biscuits that you'd never considered buying for yourself, but actually are ssurprisingly tasty. 

I actually knew about all this several months beforehand as Karl contacted me asking if I would do a set of images to be used as an accompanying slideshow on one of the songs.  I agreed and some of the images are scattered throughout the insert booklet. However they liked one image in particular so much that I was asked to add both brothers into it and it became the main image for the album and ended up on everything.  And I do mean everything!  I now have a little collection of merchandise which I shall hoard with pride and bring out on special occasions.  Except for the album.  That's going in my car.