The Edinburgh Fringe is back, even if not at quite the size and volume of previous years. The Quaker Meeting House, where I work, hasn’t been able to open its doors as a real-life venue this year, but we wanted to tell people that we’re still here and doing what we can, so we’ve taken a heroic leap into 21st century technology and created an online venue, and with the help of Sandy Butler I recorded a show, appropriately entitled “Heroes”. It’s a charity fundraiser concert, with some new songs and one or two old favourites, covering (amongst other things) Quakers, protestors, the secret life of trainspotters and what it means to be a hero in the 2020s.
In these difficult times of ongoing weirdness we really need to re-think what being heroic means, and we’ve got potentially very little time to do it. Later this year we’ve got the COP26 in Glasgow, and that’s where we really need to make sure the politicians listen to the environmental science and take action. Preventing climate catastrophe: what could be more heroic than that?
To tie in with this theme I’m currently in the process of releasing a new EP, also called “Heroes”, and I’ve got a couple of new singles in the pipeline which I think are pretty on-topic. The show is is available online on demand for the whole duration of the Fringe (6th-30th August). Tickets cost £6 from the Fringe website and all net proceeds go to support the Grassmarket Community Project in Edinburgh and Quaker work in the UK and abroad. The EP will be available online very soon.