Category Archives: Fun

Buy our CD, 40 Years Young!

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As part of our 40th anniversary celebrations, we have recorded a CD. So if you have ever wondered what Shrewsbury Morris sounds like, now is your chance to find out!

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The CD is professionally recorded and mastered, and features 19 tracks. Some of these are live recordings of us dancing, some are studio versions of traditional tunes that we dance to. You get a glimpse of our Christmas Ceilidh and tunes from right through our history, to the two dances we wrote to celebrate our 40th year.

Here’s a clip of what you can expect!

The CDs are £10 inc P&P – drop us a line to bev.langton@talk21.com and we’ll pop one in the post to you.

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Shrewsbury Morris Bid for Festive No. 1

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In a bold festive move, in no way influenced by any Christmas Spirit, we have ventured onto Soundcloud!

We would love you to listen to our Ceilidh band playing I Saw Three Ships from our traditional Christmas Ceilidh on December 5th. This wonderful event pulls crowds in from miles around, with people coming back year after year and also featuring the famous running raffle…

We always have a theme for for the ceilidh, this year’s was Magic. Most of the side and a fair amount of the audience turn up in fancy dress – this year we had Gandalf, Maleficent and Freddie Mercury (well, it is a kind of magic…)

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On the track, you can hear the dancers having a great time to the accomplished calling of Bev Langton.

We also always do a ‘spot’ in the interval. This year, we surprised the audience with a christmas medley from the Shrewsbury Morris Spoonchestra!

Dancing Dayz at the Day of Dance

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Last year we (and Shrewsbury of course) had the serious privilege of hosting The Morris Federation Day Of Dance (it’s actually their AGM but it’s a damn fine excuse to hold a huge Morris houlie too).

It was a great success and one of our guests that day, the delightful Belfagan Women’s Morris Dancers from Cockermouth in Cumbria were chosen to host this year’s event in the beautiful Lakes town of Keswick…walking boots on Shrewsbury Morris!!

We had been looking forward to this all year so it was with great relish that we made our collective ways (or not) through the varying degrees of backed up motorway traffic to Keswick on Friday 26th September. We had all decided to stay in different accommodation so the hardier souls camped or motorhomed, those with rugged tastes stayed in the town youth hostel and the lightweights and comfort seekers stayed in B&B (hello blogger!! *note, and webmistress!).

Those who were lucky enough to be retired or on a career break (as my wife calls it) had legged it up the M6 early enough to avoid the traffic, checked in chez comfort and were checking out the Keswick ale houses by 4pm……it should be said at this point that we are NOT a boozy side but there are certain things that need to be reconnoitred early in order to inform the later arrivals of their location and suitability (that’s my excuse anyway). Actually I fell asleep (lightweight again) so missed the later arrivals!!

By 10pm we were all in location and in various states of tiredness etc and looking forward to the weekend’s dancing.

After breakfast on the Saturday (during which I had to pose in Morris kit for some overseas visitors to take photographs!!) all the visiting teams (some 30 of them) met up at the central location for the day, bought our super duper laser guided badges and filled up with coffee, tea and biscuits before splitting up and heading off for our first dance spots.

We were starting our day by the town underpass with the delightful Carlisle Sword and Clog team, many of whom were already known by some of our members, so it was a good beginning to the event for us, along with Ripley Green Garters too. We then had a hysterical dance set in Museum Square with Pately Long Sword before a less than hysterical forced march down to the riverside of the spectacular Derwent Water for a spot on the Landing Stages with the lovely Westmorland Step & Garland Dancers. It did get easier after that with us wending our way gently back to the town, stopping to dance with the super Strictly Clog (who boast the Morris Federation President in their ranks) in Hope Park on the way.

An elongated lunch break allowed us to rest a little and get some fuel on board after a very energetic morning and was for me a chance to get round town to put human faces to Twitter names, having been talking online to Keswick tweeps all the week before.

In the afternoon all the visiting teams got a chance to showcase a particular dance in front of everyone else in a massed spot which is always an enjoyable (if a little nerve-racking) experience.

It had been a lovely day’s dancing, our musicians were, as always superb, all the dancers put everything into the performances and danced well and I think we entertained a lot of people judging by the crowds and the smiles on lots of faces.

The evening saw us enjoy a wonderful team meal in Sienna’s in Keswick, which had a brilliant restaurant upstairs with superb staff and fabulous food (you know, the sort you take mobile phone pictures of and post on Facebook/Twitter/insert your choice of social media platform?)

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Sunday morning of the Day of Dance always sees some teams stay and dance in the morning before leaving for home and this was no exception. Our hosts (who did a brilliant job the whole weekend) had organised a really nice dance spot at a well known local tourist rest place called Rheged and a good few teams had stayed overnight and rocked up there to put a good finish to a fine weekend. The teams rotated around the real estate until finally all converging on the large downstairs hall area where representatives of all the teams were involved in a final “massed dance” called Greenhams (I think) – anyway it was great fun.


A great weekend, we had super fun, it was lovely to meet lots of other teams dancing different styles of Morris and the weather was pretty good to us all.

Congratulations and thanks to the fabulous Belfagan Morris for organising such a brilliant event which went like clockwork and for looking after us all so well. No doubt they had a houlie of their own afterwards to celebrate the end of a long year of preparation….and we know what THAT’s like!! :)))

The Busk Blog

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So, the new dance season is beckoning her handkerchief bound finger and our 2014 so far sees us with a brand new sponsor, (Pipekit….brilliant local company…..lovely folk… make amazing things to help industry and people…..loving them!!), brand new dancers, some new dances to perform and a whole truckload of excitement coming your way as Shrewsbury Morris get ready to kick off our programme.

This begins with us being part of the second Big Busk in Shrewsbury town centre on Sat April 5th in aid of The Shrewsbury Ark. This will be a day when Shrewsbury fills with all sorts of wonderful music (and some dancing from ours truly) which should rival last year’s event for fun, colour and diversity.

At the time of going to blog we don’t have the exact programme for the day but we will publish details on here, Twitter and FB as the event gets nearer (but don’t bet on us NOT being in Shrewsbury Square at some point!)

To publicise the day we took part in a Shropshire Star photoshoot at Music Bros in Rous Hill a week ago, organised by The Big Busk guardians Karen Higgins and Annemarie Bebbington. This turned out to be really fun as the event had to be kept secret because of all the groupies and fans who were roaming Shrewsbury, their faces glued to their mobile phone screens trying to find out where Julia and I were going to be. This proved an exhausting and extremely stressful time as we had to hide in………..OK, reality check!!…….they were possibly more likely to have been looking for young Birmingham rapper and rising star Leo Goldenchild who is also taking part in The Big Busk and whom we met at the photoshoot along with singer/songwriter Nikki Rous.

What a thoroughly nice group of people they were and we look forward to catching up with them at the event in April.

So, for a good day out, some diverse (and free) musical entertainment covering opera to ukelele bands….and of course us….come and join in The Big Busk on Saturday April 5th, help a good cause and have some fun!

Because we will…:))

Looking Back and Forward – A Brief Overview

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2013 was quite a year for us, one of the best in our nearly 37 year history.

We performed in a football stadium, hosted a hugely successful National Day of Dance smack in the middle of wonderful Shrewsbury, danced to neon flashing lights in a Flax Mill silo, performed at our home Folk Festival, got prodded by bayonets in Wellington, jigged with a Lego Brick on legs, entertained huge crowds in a Welsh castle, had great dance fun with a Mayor, froze and almost got trapped in Snowdonia, danced around Boycie at a Food Festival and enjoyed Morrismania at Upton on Severn, amongst many other great memories…….oh and a bodhran playing frog and a bright green Medusa came to our Christmas Ceilidh!

In addition, we have recruited a lot of lovely new people, seen our social media presence bloom to an extraordinary degree and just been sponsored for 2014 by Pipekit, a very forward thinking, family run local company which has truly embraced the Morris ethos.

Exciting times!

So, we emerge into a New Year buzzing with anticipation about what’s to come and with a flood of dance requests from all over the country to work through and consider…….more recruiting evenings……an AGM (OK, not so good)……a pantomime……some charity stuff……and lots of other potentially great things.

We are still always looking for new members, we’re in training now (Sundorne School, Shrewsbury, most Thurs nights, 8pm) and you (yes you, the one reading this) could be the next person we recruit.

So, if you like fun, laughter, friendship and can move about a bit, (no experience necessary) the chances are we can turn you into a Morris Dancer.

Call us on 07799 408297 and join us in 2014 for a season of FUN!!