Last night saw me renew my (intended to be now ongoing) relationship with Celtic-function outfit The Duffys.

A Thursday night wedding in the sticks in Essex required that band’s usual 2 x 45 minutes of mixed rock and cheese standards on the one hand and Irish drinking and dancing songs on the other – some new variations in the set included multi-instrumentalist frontman John Duffy swapping essentially Avicii’s version of ‘Wake me Up’ from acoustic guitar to accordion (plus fiddle, electric guitar, bass and drums) and a new cover of ‘All about that Bass’ (not seeming so remarkable till you remember this band only has male vocals. The crowd loved it).

The clients and indeed their guests were clearly really more interested in the Irish and country side of the band though – it is refreshing to get shouts for ‘More Irish music!’ when you’ve just done a handful of fairly guaranteed dance floor fillers of the sort that prop up any ordinary wedding band set – especially such a long geographical and cultural way from Ireland! Among the specific requests from the couple was The Devil went Down to Georgia after the manner of the Charlie Daniels Band. Suffice to say that one gave me some considerable hard work to do in the days leading up to the gig, but it went (down) (to Georgia? or Hell?) extremely well in the end.

Of course, I did need more coffee than usual to plough through my 4 hours of day job today. But you can’t expect to get paid without working! Here’s to the next wedding (a quote not to be taken out of context … ).