Woodpigeon - A Fiery Breeze

A huge thank you to Calgary’s Woodpigeon for dragging themselves out of bed and cabbing it over to our school to play for our wee four and five year olds in between scheduled performances in Stockton-on-Tees and Derby.

When Alan McGee released his Creation compilation album ‘Doing it for the Kids’ I doubt he quite had this in mind.

Armed with a guitar, a cello and a ukulele, the Canadian folkestra needed only a quick raid of the school’s music resources to enrich their sound with a xylophone, some maracas and a guiro before they were off.

This was the group’s first ever gig in a school and they played it perfectly. They taught the children about the instruments, encouraged them to take up music as a hobby and then played a thirty minute set including ‘The Book of Love’, ‘I Live a Lot of Places’ and a cover of Kris Ellestad’s ‘The Secret’. The Ellestad song is about as inappropriate as you can get for a primary school but by cunningly replacing the frequent references to body parts, fluids and functions with blanket use of the word ‘alphabet’ nobody on the staff needed to lose their job.

The end of the performance prompted one little boy to leap to his feet and shout ‘I just LOVED that’. As the band themselves would say: Awesome.

The secret it shot out in alphabet and alphabet alphabet.