Magpie Lane Christmas concerts 2014

As mentioned in this morning’s post, it’s coming up to that time of year when Magpie Lane whip up unbridled enthusiasm up and down the country with their celebrated Christmas shows (it says here).

Clearly I’m biased, but people do seem to have a good time when they come to see us – at any time of the year – and the Christmas shows  are particularly special.  If you like the sort of things I’ve posted here over the last few Christmasses then, frankly, I can’t recommend our Christmas gigs highly enough.

We kick off next Saturday, 6th December, at the Holywell Music Room in Oxford, with 4.00 and 7.30 p.m. concerts. For tickets contact
Tim Healey : 01865 249194 (cheque only)
or the Oxford Playhouse box office: 01865 305305 or www.oxfordplayhouse.com/ticketsoxford

This is our favourite venue, but if it’s a bit soon to start winding down for Christmas, or if you’re from a bit further North, why not come along to our first ever Christmas show in Towcester Town Hall, on Sunday 14th December?  Full details and tickets from Eventbrite.

Those are the local gigs, but for those of you living further South, we are very pleased to be returning to: St Dunstans Catholic Church in Woking, Surrey on Sunday 7th – in aid of Woking and Sam Beare Hospices; and Ringwood Folk Club in Hampshire on Tuesday 16th December.

We hope to see you at one or other of these events.

Meanwhile, to get you in the mood, here’s a Magpie Lane Christmas playlist. Some of these recordings have appeared already on this blog, but there are others you may not have heard. In some ways my favourite of these is ‘Babes in the Wood’. It’s a perennial favourite which we’ve sung most years since 1994. It’s not a hi-fi recording, and there’s some loud coughing from someone in the audience who must have been sitting quite close to the microphone ( it was December after all). But what I like about it is that it really captures the feeling of our Holywell gigs – there’s a roomful of people, many of whom come along every single year, and must know some of these songs backwards by now, and it sounds like every last person in the hall is enthusiastically joining in on the chorus.