What a weekend!

Shine had a fabulous weekend when they performed for the lovely people at the Brakefield Street Party in South Brent on Saturday 31st May 2025 and then at the amazing Stokeley Farm Shop on Sunday 1st June 2025.

Brakefield Street Party - Saturday 31st May 2025

We were all primed up and raring to go upon our arrival at Brakefield on Saturday. However, when we arrived we thought we had either got the wrong street or the wrong date because there was only this friendly chap called Keith and his wife stood on an empty driveway, well there was a Gazebo, but no people! What is this? Where are they all? Hmmm, this could be interesting!

So, not to be perturbed, we started setting up our instruments and fired up our speaker with reggae sounds aplenty. Slowly but surely, as we continued setting up, more and more people arrived and in fact, by the time we were well into our performance and we were getting near to our finale, we counted well over a hundred neighbours and friends and wow, what a lovely neighboorhood Brakefield is!

They were all so friendly and Keith and his wife and everyone there were so welcoming and we had a fabulous afternoon, despite some rather blowy weather conditions. There was even a raffle during the interval which was hilarious as Keith called out the ticket numbers, sometimes several times over in his broad Devonshire accent, 'pink 246' until one of the neighbours answered ' 'ere... oh no sorry, it's orange!' ...or something like that... it was very funny though.

Such lovely people and we really hope we are invited back to play for them next year. Thank you Keith and also to your lovely wife who makes the best of cups of tea!

P.S. I forgot to mention that the Red Arrows who were performing at the Riviera Airshow that day, flew over just as we finished playing - amazing!

Stokeley Farm Shop - Sunday 1st June 2025

Following our success from the day before in South Brent, we made our way to the wonderful Stokeley Farm Shop for a lunchtime performance on a rather blustery, rainy Sunday in June. We had three challenges this day, first was the Riviera Airshow, second was the Kingsbridge Music Festival, two local events that could potentially reduce our audience numbers and third was the weather which was not behaving itself. But, we are Shine Steel Band - pah - who cares about those things?! We were there to have fun, play and perform to our best ability which is exactly what we did and do you know what? we had a brilliant day!

By the time we had reached what was to be our last number, the crowd were shouting out 'more, more, more' So, we gave them more and they loved it and so did we. We even had some audience participation too when Phil announced an impromptu dancing competition then quickly realised he had nothing to give away as a prize - doh! Fortunately, we had a spare flower garland which was presented to little 5 year old Alaya who had a lovely time dancing away in front of us, well done little one.

After a rainy, blowy start to our debut gig at Stokeley Farm Shop, it turned into a sunny, fun and vibrant afternoon of reggae, ska and even heavy metal, played to a very appreciative audience made of of locals, visitors, family and friends. Thank you to Rosemary and her Team at Stokeley Farm Shop for inviting us to play at your wonderful venue and thank you to all who turned up to listen to us play. We really hope to be back again one day to play at Stokely Farm Shop, thank you one and all.