A few years ago, Tom, James and I started singing together in a more organised sort of way, doing three part harmonies in a folk style. We started because we had regular events locally with floor spots and because it turned out that James could hold a tune no matter what and that harmonies could be built around him to good effect.

Nearly two years ago at an event in Shropshire we found that the space we’d been put in wasn’t suitable at all for the workshop we’d planned, and off the cuff, changed gear and sang a set instead. We got away with it, and, motivated by this, I wrote the Hopeless Maine sea shanty.

About eighteen months ago we were invited to do a Saturday evening event as part of Stroud Book Festival. Now, graphic novels do not lend themselves to public performance – you can’t read from then, or hold them up in a meaningful way for more than a table’s worth of people. And Gods help me, I am not getting into powerpoint projections. So we undertook to sing, putting together a set of songs around which we could talk about Hopeless. It went well, and since then we’ve taken that mix of stories and songs to other events.

Last weekend we were in Gloucester as part of the folk trail, with a set in the Victorian school room at the folk museum. When we do steampunk events, we tend to bill ourselves as Hopeless Maine because there’s a fighting chance people have heard of it. On the folk side, less so. When we go out as a folk activity, we’re A Cup Full of Tentacles – named for a piece of art Tom did some years ago. And yes, on one occasion someone did put us on as ‘a cup full of testicals’ instead.

For the folk trail, Saffy made us an actual cup full of tentacles (photo below). Saffy is awesome. You can find out more about her here – http://www.snell-pym.org.uk/

And here’s the original cup….