2019 as been an exciting one for us a band, a year dominated by the Kolar’s Gold project, but with some great gigs and unexpected accolades thrown in too.
Our musical year began almost before the last mince pies of 2018 had been eaten, in the briefly comforting knowledge that after weeks of nail biting, breath holding waiting, funding for the Kolar’s Gold project had been secured. There wasn’t long to dwell in the comfort of successful funding bids though as quickly the reality and challenge of our year ahead dawned.
During the first week of January we met on Skype and began plotting out the shape our year would take, tentatively scribbling down notes on an album that we could just about glimpse on the distant horizon. For the next few weeks messages, audio clips and emails would fly across the internet as ideas began to form.
January also saw Tom head to India, and on the day Kolar’s Gold officially began he could be found at the Kolar Gold Fields, a visit that he documented with characteristic literary skill here.
In February we gathered at Neal’s house and began to sketch out tracks, musical ideas and some of the complicated logistics that would be needed if we were to pull this album off, ending our few days together with a sell out gig at the Old Library in Bodmin. Those few days together were one of the many highlights of our year and you can read our musings about them here.
At the end of March, as the first signs of Spring began to show in Cornwall, Laura boarded a plane bound for Bangalore. What followed was a packed schedule of meetings, recording and a visit to the Kolar Gold fields alongside time spent with friends, old and new. You can read more about her visit here.
Spring arrived in all its fullness and with it came another chance to regroup as a band, this time in Norfolk with a gig at one of our favourite venues- Mitre. Hot on the heels of that weekend we headed North and spent a fun packed weekend at the wonderful Shepley Spring festival being joined on stage by new friends made in the Cornish singing workshop we had led earlier in the day.
All the while recording for Kolar’s Gold was taking place in earnest both in Bangalore and Cornwall, our talented collaborators turning our sketched out ideas into reality.
June saw Tom hitting the A303 once more as he headed down to Cornwall for a performance at Fest Kernewek and as Spring turned to Summer we met once more, this time in Suffolk. We spent a long weekend in July escaping the heatwave outside in the welcome cool of Wrentham chapel as we wrote and recorded the final parts and tracks for Kolar’s Gold.
By the time we met again at the end of August there had been three house moves; Rich to the clay country, Tom to a cottage in the Norfolk countryside complete with a Riverside pub around the corner, and Richard significantly closer to the Cornwall contingent as he swapped Norfolk for Sidmouth.
August bank holiday was spent mixing the Kolar’s Gold tracks and preparing for our gig at the Cornwall Folk Festival which was one of our favourite gigs of the year.
In September Neal, Laura and Richard attended the Gorsedh Kernow awards ceremony and recieved the award given to the band for ‘Outstanding Contribution to Cornish Music’. Receiving the award was a wonderful surprise, and a huge encouragement for us as a band.
With the exception of a wonderful gig in Newquay, Autumn and winter have been a time for putting the finishing touches to the Kolar’s Gold album, getting it ready for production, beginning work on the PR and marketing, and all the admin that goes alongside it.
For the whole of 2019 uncovering the stories of a Cornish community at KGF and the Indian community they lived alongside has been our goal as a band, for some of us it has been close to an obsession.
The project we laid out in our funding bids a year ago feels almost unrecognisable now. What we thought would be possible to achieve has been exceeded 10-fold, the adventure we’ve been on more than anything we would have dreamt possible back then.
It has been the people we’ve met over the past year that have made our journey through this project so special. We have learned so much from them whether they are historians, musicians or members of the KGF and Cornish communities. Without their support we wouldn’t have got this far.
As we near the end of the Kolar’s Gold project it feels like we have discovered a box hidden at the back of an attic, dusted it off and begun to look through its contents. There is so much in that box, so much we haven’t seen yet, and far more than can be told through one album or by us alone. Several people have asked us ‘What’s next for Kolar’s Gold?’. The truthful answer is ‘We don’t know’. Whether we continue to sift through the metaphorical box’s contents, or whether that will fall to someone else we shall see.
In the short term it is more a case of moving forward than moving on. The Kolar’s Gold album is currently in the hands of reviewers and will be released in February. The are some very exciting gigs planned for 2020 and we have a new album in the pipeline, going back to our original desire to explore Cornish folk music and the Cornish language. But there is also a feeling that the end of the Kolar’s Gold project is a beginning. Certainly, the friendships we’ve made both in Cornwall and India will endure, as we hope will the connection made between KGF and Cornwall.
As we look ahead to the coming year, 2020 looks set to be very different from 2019, but equally exciting.
‘The end is where we start from’ T.S.Elliott
