Band in France for festival

From the Wiltshire Times, first published Saturday 24th Nov 2007.

A GROUP of musicians are crossed the Channel today to represent Melksham at an event in the French town it is twinned with.

Traditional folk group Tinkers Bag will be playing in Avon, near Fountainbleu, tonight as part of Le 8e Salon Anglo-Saxon, a festival celebrating Anglo-Saxon culture.

Tinkers Bag is an eight-piece folk group that plays songs and ceilidhs and was set up by the organiser of Chippenham Folk Festival Bob Berry and his wife Gill.

Mr Berry said: "We'll be taking a slice of Wiltshire with us in the form of our Wiltshire-based traditional music and some gifts.

"We are playing along with a Canadian arcadia group called Le Grand Derangement and the novelist Fay Weldon, although I think she's doing a book signing, I'm not sure she sings."

Mr Berry has also been busy creating some homemade backdrops for their performance in the form of some line drawings that he transferred onto artist's canvas from original line drawings in the Wiltshire Heritage Museum, Devizes.

He said: "The purpose of these are to create an interesting backdrop for the show that the band is performing, which is the latest in the band's repertoire called Sing The Year Round."

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