2006

The Ship Vic is a real traditional pub in Chester with darts, an old upright piano, real ale and a warm welcome for musicians. It's run by Joe and Ruth Gildea and most of the Mahones/ Full House musical network have played gigs there at one time or another. More importantly, this great little pub is the nerve centre of a very active long term charity effort. Angela, much loved daughter of Joe and Ruth and sister to Simon lost her brave battle against Breast Cancer early in 2002. Since then the Ship Victory Pub has, through the Angela Gildea Memorial Fund, raised large amounts money for the Countess of Chester Hospital Breast Cancer Appeal.

If you'd like to help raise money for this cause, please visit their new web site which is being built for them by Rusty and Beth. You can use it as a portal to buy various stuff online and the hosts will make a donation to the charity. There's also various advertising and other stuff available on the site which can help to raise money.

The New Album is here! Online shopping available from 3rd April. Order it now! The title is MAHONE BREW, named after the excellent real ale custom brewed for us by our mates Mr W and Mr C at the WC Brewery, Chester. The tracklist is:

·	All the way over the sea

·	The church of St Mahone

·	Raggedy Man

·	Broader in the Beam

·	Will you stay?

·	Friday Busking Club

Alton Lea

·	Lay me at Llanbadrig

·	Made 'em all

·	Sweet Molly

·	Old Jock of the byways

·	Coast to Coast

Mayfair

We're pleased with the finished product and it was a real team effort, the studio tracks being engineered and recorded by Charlie, followed up with heroic work on production and mixing by Christy and DJ. Donal created the wonderful artwork. The live tracks were recorded by Chris Hassall and mixed by Doc. Online sales will be handled by Rusty through his newly-renovated ebay shop! And Jock will drive us round England and Scotland selling it live! Thanks also to Trampas Mahone (Mark Woolley) on whistle and Johnny Roadhouse and Nick Bell on clarinets. Mike Johnson at 101 records did a great job with the mastering, and bullying the manufacturers to get us the discs in time for the Chippy gig!

Recording of the new album is due to be completed this week and mixing is well advanced on most of the tracks. The working title is Mahone Brew and tracks included are Raggedy Man, Friday Busking Club, Broader in the Beam, Will You Stay? All the Way over the Sea, Church of St Mahone, Made em All, Sweet Molly Mahone, Alton Lea and Llanbadrig. There will also be some bonus live tracks recorded at Telfords Warehouse in December 2003 and we're choosing these from a shortlist of about 10 at present. Release date is not yet fixed but should be fairly soon now. Those live tracks not included on the album are planned for packaging into an internet-only EP release to be distributed online later in the year.

Christy and Doc are also looking forward to unleashing the first Full House album for 10 years. This will be entitled Brand New Start and will be released on 19th March on the 101 Records label. See www.fullhousefolk.co.uk for more details.

Finally, Doc was very pleased to be asked last year to do a session for Judy Dyble for her next 2 albums, the first of which was officially released by Talking Elephant on 13th Feb although there has been a slight delay. See Jude's website for latest news and sample downloads.

The 1600 members of the forum voted us Best Live Act in their 2006 Hancock Awards, the award being shared with Richard Thompson. The Hancock Awards are named in honour of much missed friend and colleague Carey Hancock. Carey was long the life and soul of Talkawhile, a tremendous character of the folk scene, and a great supporter of all things folk-rock. He was a lifelong enthusiast for the music of Dave Swarbrick and a great supporter of Swarb through the difficult times before and after his lung transplant. The award is shown below and the citation is signed by Swarb. We are proud to be involved in commemorating Carey. Read more about him and support Cancer Research by following this link.

Following last years successful but all too brief launch of Mahone Brew Ale, specially brewed for us by WC Brewery, Chester, we have commissioned two barrels for this year's Christmas gig at Telfords warehouse. As the first barrel sold out by 8.30pm last year, we hope this year the second barrel will at least see us through to 9.30! So we look forward to seeing you on 17th December for a night of revelry and custom-brewed real ale.

As time goes on and web technology marches ever faster it makes less and less sense to host photos, videos and sound files on our web site. So from now on we will be using the full range of modern technology to bring you ever more Mahones sounds and images! In future I'll be adding photos in the form of online public Picasa albums hosted at http://picasaweb.google.com/DocMahone. Video will be handled by Charlie using YouTube at http://www.youtube.com/profile?user=SirCharlesMahone. Finally, Rusty will also be promoting the band via his domain http://www.forsalein.org/ and you will find Mahones-related links there. Easy links are provided on the Sounds and Picture page on this site so you can continue to navigate via there. Finally, we're also invading MySpace: Rusty's Family Mahone MySpace here ..and Doc's own space here

On 1st December at Northwich we'll be joined on stage at various times during the evening by some musical friends to augment the night with a few surprises. Not least, we're delighted to welcome along again Thea Gilmore, who joined us for a couple of impromptu songs at the Crewe gig earlier in the year. It's a fair bet that "Fairytale of New York" will feature in the set on the 1st. We also take this opportunity to congratulate Thea and Nigel on the recent arrival of 9lb baby Egan.

Tickets for the gig are selling pretty well but there should also be some available on the door as far as we can judge at present. Don't forget you can also catch us at our traditional Christmas gig at the St Helens Citadel the following night, and at Telfords Warehouse in Chester, along with 144 pints of Mahone Brew, on Sunday 17th. You can also see Christy and Doc playing with Full House at the Ship Victory in Chester on Saturday 9th and the Cross Keys on 23rd.

The Christie Hospital gig on November 11th raised the fantastic sum of £1965 towards the work of the hospital. This will all go into medical services with no deductions for administration costs. The hospital is a well known establishment in the North West, specialising in cancer and complementary care. Many thanks to all who came and supported this event.

Elsewhere on the site, the "About us" page has been updated. The previous page was obviously a transparent fantasy, the fevered ramblings of a diseased mind. So now, at last, we print the truth. remember, you read it here first!

So, a successful night on 1st at Northwich. Many thanks to (in order of appearance) Nick Mitchell, Arthur Marshall, Nigel Stonier and the wonderful Thea Gilmore for their contributions. And to baby Egan who behaved himself wonderfully well considering his parents were cruel enough to bring him to a Mahones show as his first gig! And of course, to Chris Hassall who did a solo job on the PA, and to all the crew who helped with the door and merchandise.

Next up was a 1-off acoustic gig at the Fox In in Oswestry, a special favour for our excellent sound man Chris Hassall, who had expected only a trio but got the whole band and an awful lot of punters; mercifully the weather was fine and they were able to set up a stage in the beer garden behind the pub. DJ played bodhran and acoustic guitar instead of his usual cacophony, and very fine it sounded too. Later on in September we headed off to Ullapool for the Loopallu festival, and what wonderful event it is! We played the Friday night at The Ceilidh Place, a late gig on probably the smallest stage we have ever crammed onto, but what a great atmosphere and crowd! Saturday passed in a blissful kaleidoscope of music, from sessions to listening to new-found friends The Eighteenth Day of May (check 'em out!), playing our own set early evening, and DJ joining Hayseed Dixie for an impromptu couple of numbers using wooden spoons instead of drumsticks. And the DVD proves that we enjoyed the best light show at a Mahones gig that any of us can remember. All this and some very good Scottish real ale. No one will be too surprised if we find ourselves back in Ullapool in September 2007.

The show moved on via Bury Met in October and a charity gig for Christies cancer hospital in November, arriving at Northwich Memorial Hall for our own Christmas party gig on 1st December. Arthur Marshall and Nick Mitchell (aka Bilbo Mahone) joined us for a ceilidh set to start the evening, the audience competing to see who could display the most bemused expression as they ended up doing things they hadn't expected at all! Then the usual fare, finishing the first half with "Fairytale of New York", joined again by Thea Gilmore and Nigel Stonier. Backstage was baby Egan, 2 weeks old and attending his first gig. He was good as gold throughout but didn't partake of the mince pies and mulled wine. Somebody commented to DJ after the show that Fairytale sounded "just like the original..." (pause) " one good singer and one s*** singer!" St Helens was riotous on the following Saturday night, two solid sets followed by an encore enlivened by various antics from the rhythm section.

Our final gig of the year was at Telford's Warehouse in Chester, a local gig for several of the band and crew, and always a great social occasion. This year WC brewery brewed 2 barrels of Mahone Brew so it at least lasted until 9.30pm this year. Three barrels next year, I think! Thea and Nigel joined us again for "Play until the bottle..." and "Fairytale..", the latter played a second time as the final encore. A fitting end to the year, methinks.

As ever, although you see 6 of us on stage, even for a band of our legendary lethargy it takes a lot more people to keep it all rolling. First, from the 6 of us to our 7th full time member, Big Jock Mahone who makes sure we and the gear are all there (at least in one sense of the phrase!). Our thanks also to Chris H, Keith, Ess, Paddy, Don's mate whose name escapes me (sorry :-( ), Beth and to Ben and Matty who have helped out for the first time this year. And not least to all of you who have come to the gigs in even greater numbers this year; it's a real privilege to be able to share our music with you all.

Big news in the first part of the year was the 2006 Hancock Award for best live act, voted by the members of the Talkawhile bulletin board. After a warm-up gig in Preston and the obligatory alcoholic effort on St Patrick's night we had an altogether more respectable gig at Chipping Norton theatre on 1st April where Judy Dyble presented the award and sang a song with us, the first of a number of musical friends to throw caution to the winds and join some or all of us on stage this year. In Crewe at the end of April, it was Thea Gilmore's turn to show up and grace the stage far more than we could, allowing us to join with her and Nigel Stonier in a nicely tipsy version of her wonderful song "Play until the Bottle is Gone" . Whitchurch and Middlewich Festival were their usual selves in May and June, the latter enlivened for Christy, Rusty and I by co-opting Dave Pegg to play bass with us for the second half of Full House's Saturday night set.

On April 3rd MAHONE BREW was released and has sold really well at the gigs. Together with a new design of T shirt the merch stall has been busy and varied this year, well bolstered by online sales through Rusty's virtual shop.

The week after Middlewich, Jock set off in the van for Aberdeen, the rest of us heading for Manchester airport. Amazingly, we all met up in Sumburgh airport as planned for the short drive to Lerwick and the Jonsmas Foy festival. A splendid weekend of music and beer ensued, including John McCusker joining us on stage at the Friday night gig. The early evening set on the Saturday was followed by a great session in The Lounge Bar where we met old friends Chris Henderson and Frances Wilkins of Solan. I seem to remember the early hours of the morning passing in a haze of Beatles songs...