The New Rope String Band plans to call it a day after one uproarious final gig; The New Rope String Band, and predecessor The Old Rope String Band, have been making people laugh for years.
Byline: David Whetstone
Melanie Young had a good night at Long Clawson Village Hall in Leicestershire. "Thankyou for a wonderful evening," she told The New Rope String Band. "I laughed till I ached."
Bob Gibbon, director of Orkney Folk Festival, had obviously booked the Tyneside threesome with just the tiniest seed of doubt in his mind.
"They were a revelation," he said after the gig in the far north. "I didn't expect them to be quite as incredible as they were."
"Quite frankly," mused radio station Castle FM, "the written word cannot begin to do justice to the supercharged silliness of the performance."
Tim O'Brien, another to have fallen under the 'New Rope' spell, suggested: "If the Queen could knight them or something, it would be a good idea."
Who knows? Perhaps even Her Majesty would be amused at the musical antics of Tim Dalling, Pete Challoner and Jock Tyldesley.
Sadly (surely?) she -- and we -- have just one more chance to see the New Ropes in action.
It'll come at Newcastle's Tyne Theatre & Opera House which they have chosen as their swansong venue when they bow out on Halloween, October 31.
Tim Dalling, minus knighthood and even musical instrument, comes into the office to explain, over a cup of tea and a Kit Kat, why The New Rope String Band is to be consigned to the great memory bank of mirth.
"We ended up making jokes about comebacks to people because we got fed up with talking about it," says Scotsman Tim who is wont to sport a kilt when cavorting on stage with his accordion.
"We thought we'd better have a discussion about it. We haven't said never ever again but we want time to do other things... then, if we did come back, we'd come back refreshed and with new ideas.
"It's felt that it's become a bit unwieldy, schlepping all this stuff around all sorts of venues and folk festivals when you never really know what kind of place it'll be until you get there.
"A lot of our bread and butter gigs were rural touring stuff and we were flavour of the month for a long time because the show we do fits with any age group really. It also seemed to work in any environment so it was fine for all those village halls.
"But that is quite an over-subscribed scene in terms of everyone wanting to get into it. You'll maybe get four or five gigs in one county and they're generally very nice gigs to be doing."
Those who support rural touring, such as Arts Council England, have to be seen to be ringing the changes and nurturing the new.
"We never...
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