It’s about attitude, the attitude that we have to our music.  All of us sing or play the music we want to because we want to make music, not because we want to be on X Factor or make £250 a gig playing interminable Hits of the Sixties for weddings and parties.  To a certain extent, I think we play music because we have to play music; even other priorities like families or careers can’t stop us getting that music out there where it can be heard.

And that’s the other point: music for us is something that needs to be heard. It doesn’t really exist unless someone is listening.  Which is probably why so many of us are prepared to go out and do gigs and come home with next to nothing, especially after we’ve paid for new strings, petrol, that takeaway because there wasn’t time to cook before the gig, the couple of beers afterwards and all the phone calls it took to get it organised.  It’s all worth it if there were some people there who listened, appreciated, applauded and came up afterwards to say how much they enjoyed the gig.

The other trait we share is knowing about our music. Where our music is in a specialised genre or niche market, we’ve done our research: we know most of what there is to know about bluegrass or cumbia or klezmer or whatever; even if we’re taking unforgivable liberties with it we still know where it came from, who played it in what context, who the leading exponents are or were, and what musical characteristics set it apart from other genres.  We could probably bore for England on our chosen subject given half a chance and too much red wine.  Even if we’re not into obscure subgenres we have a pretty good idea where our music comes from and where we’re going with it.