Blog: Rocking Twyford (Hants)

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On Wednesday I set off for distant TWYFORD, HAMPSHIRE, in continuation of the Hibbett & Christopher tour. I was meant to get the train all the way to nearby Shawford, but a delay of 7 minutes meant I just missed my connection, but luckily Mr CJ Thorpe-Tracey was able to come and fetch me from Winchester instead, so all was well.

Chris was driving the same hire car we'd had to get to Found at the weekend, so I was able to recognise it as he approached. This gave me a sudden weird JOLT of memory - when I was a child I knew what cars the different adults in my life drove and could identify them approaching, but nowadays a) all cars are the same few colours and look basically the same i.e. like BIG GREY TRAINERS and b) I so rarely see adults I know in their cars that when I do they've usually changed them since last time. It felt nice to think "OH, there's Chris's car!" even though next time I see him in one it'll be a different one that he's hired.

Anyway, I got in and we zoomed through what I feel the local tourist board will one day be calling "Thorep-Tracey Country" to Twyford itself and the house of Oliver and Birgit who were our hosts. The gig was, basically, like HIBBETTFEST in that it took place in someone's back garden, with the only differnce being that instead of standing on a patio with a wooden outbuilding in it, this time we were INSIDE the massive wooden CHALET that they had. It was amazing - an actual small wooden venue in a back garden. It also smelt LOVELY, like the inside of a SAUNA, and by the end of the evning it felt even more like one too!



Chris and I did a quick soundcheck and then had a chat with the evening's main act, Mr L Rains III. Goodness ME but he was a lovely, lovely man. It helped that he had an AMAZING accent - he comes from Birmingham Alabama and talked like someone off the telly. I could have listened to him for HOURS anyway but he was also super-delightfully full of THORT and HUMOUR and also STORIES. Our conversation was only halted by being called into DINNER in the kitchen, which was all rather delightful and also reminded my of HIBBETTFEST. I guess the real difference here was events happened in "Swiss Cottage" (i.e. the chalet) all year round with different artistes, rather than just ME!

Soon people started to arrive and Chris and I retired to the green room/OFFICE where, after briefly toying with NOT doing so, I fully committed to the bit and put my suit on, with Chris also changing into stage garb. Similar to how I felt at Found, it was slightly odd to find myself putting a SUIT on the situation, and later a couple of people remarked on being surprised to see us so dressed, but if we're going to DO it this way then we should stick to it!

We also grappled for a long time with the setlist, as for time purposes we were going to have to drop a couple of the songs we'd done last time. The trouble was we loved ALL of them, so it took AGES to work out, but when we had we wafted across the patio towards SHOWTIME. The plan had been for Chris to start playing the intro to Say It With Words and then for me to stroll on stage, but once within the chalet I realised that it was SUCH a tiny place and also SO VERY PACKED that I was going to be in the way of everybody if I tried to do that, so instead went and stood next to Chris as we began a set that went a little something like THIS:

Say It With Words

Chips And Cheese, Pint Of Wine

When You Hear A Bird

The Perfect Love Song

7 Hearts

In The North Stand

Timewasters

It Only Works Because You're here

We had a LOVELY time! The audience were fab, and OOHED and LARFED and CLAPPED at all appropriate places. It's been odd, these past two gigs, hearing people still LARF at things - in my head, the idea of this whole project was to do the songs SERIOUSLY and say "LO! Witness the serious artistic craft of my OUVRE!" with people nodding and gently weeping in response, but that isn't how it's gone at all. If anything there seems to be MORE chuckling as people properly listen to what we're doing, but then there IS also quite a lot of nodding and also bits where everyone gets Quite Thoughtful. I guess that's a good thing, it just wasn't what I was expecting!

There was also further INTERACTION between Chris and I, which I find dead exciting. I often get distracted while singing by thinking "Ooh, what shall I say after this one?" but this time I was CONCENTRATING, partly because I had had but ONE (1) beer before going on stage (I know I said I wasn't going to have BOOZE at all before these gigs, but in my defence everybody else had a beer so it would have been rude for me not to), but mostly it was because I knew that either Chris would say something or my BRANE would sort it out, which indeed it did. And again, even more excitingly, some of the things my aforementioned BRANE came up with were NEW things! Amazing!

Chris was FANTASTIC, obvs, and my singing seemed to be OK too - whenever I sing in this sort of way I think to myself "Wow me, you are really crooning up a storm here". When we've been recording this illusion has been rather shattered by having to go and listen back to the INJURED BELLOWING I have produced, but here In The Live Arena it remained safely inside my imagination, where it sounds much nicer!

It was all brilliant, in fact, and afterwards Chris and I exchanged excited words about the fact that it seems to be WORKING. In the interval several people came over to say how much they'd enjoyed it, including Lee who was most effusive, especially about In The North Stand which he said reminded him of his own "Grandpappy". Lawks, it sounded SO brilliant him saying it like that, I was all of a dither.

We then went in to watch Lee himself, who was ace, and not just because he kept going on about how much he'd enjoyed our set (though NOTE TO FUTURE HEADLINERS: it didn't half help). He did lots of in-between song talking, which was GRATE, and then the songs sounded like proper left-wing STOMPERS - Chris said later that it sounded like it could be a SOUL REVUE and I think this was APT. I think he usually plays with a full band too, which would have been even MORE brilliant.



Soon it was all over and time for me to fly off to the station, pausing only for some hugs (including with an EXTREMELY sweaty Lee, who had after all just been ROCKING a SAUNA for 90 minutes) and farewells before Birgit ZOOMED me to the station from whence I headed home. It was a GRATE night on what is so far a GRATE tour. More please!

posted 7/9/2026 by MJ Hibbett

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