By Judy and Nigel Hodgson

PICTURE a traditional Dales church, parts of which date back to the thirteenth century, in beautiful surroundings and rather unusually, complete with a temporary bar for the evening stocked with an extensive range of real ales. All 200-plus pews were occupied with everyone sitting waiting in anticipation for what was about to follow. This was the scene early evening on Friday, October 3 at St Andrew’s parish church in Aysgarth, Wensleydale, as folk rock duo Show of Hands prepared to captivate the audience with a special one-off pre-tour concert.

Steve Knightley and Phil Beer formed SOH in 1991, have toured extensively since and have sold out at the Albert Hall on four different occasions. Steve is hailed as one of England’s greatest singer songwriters and Phil's fiddle playing (and numerous other instruments) is second to none. Phil also does session work for many mainstream bands including The Rolling Stones. For a small Wensleydale village to host such talent is a result of their long standing friendship dating back to the 70’s with Carperby Concerts' organiser Steve Sheldon, who persuaded SOH to perform a fundraising gig for the church.

SOH opened the first set with "The Oak" and went on to play many excellent songs, to name a few – "Crow On The Cradle", "The Preacher" and "The Lads In Their Hundreds", the lyric of the latter being a WWI poem penned by AE Housman. Phil's solo rendition of Jethro Tull's "Weathercock" was one of the outstanding moments of the evening. This was followed by "Widecombe Fair", one of my favourites, with Steve and Phil wandering around the audience without the aid of the PA; Steve’s voice was phenomenal filling the venue with harmonies.

The second set opened with "Requiem" and included further well known tracks such as "Are We Alright", "The Keeper", Bob Dylan’s "Don’t think Twice It’s Alright", "Santiago", "Country Life" and much to the pleasure of the audience, the encore was “Cousin Jack”. In between songs, there was a good deal of humour and banter between Steve, Phil and the audience which only further served to make it an extraordinary night.

Fans had travelled from far and wide including France and Belgium and some had seen SOH close on 200 times ... wow! One lady declared that it was the best venue / gig she’s been to in over 14 years of concert going.

Special thanks must go to the Vicar for allowing the church to be used for the event and to Steve Sheldon for bringing such a fabulous act to the dales. The evening raised £2,200 for the church.