Lyme Regis: Headmaster has sax appeal (From Bridport and Lyme Regis News)
Contact the Bridport News with your stories, pictures and video footage. Send us an email
Lyme Regis: Headmaster has sax appeal
12:00pm Saturday 7th July 2012 in Lyme Regis By Anne Bell
NIGHT JOB: Woodroffe School headteacher Dr Richard Steward to step out of his study and on to the stage
WOODROFFE School students are in for an end-of-term treat in Lyme Regis when headmaster Dr Richard Steward steps out of his study and onto the stage.
Dr Steward will be adding sax appeal as another member of staff, IT lab technician Mary Ball, and her band launch a new album.
For one night only on July 14, Dr Steward will letting his hair down, playing saxophone in Mary’s Pure Dirt Band at the launch party for the album All The Way.
Mary, who performs under the stage name Mary Land, will be swapping her IT lab technician’s coat for cowboy boots and a Stetson as she and her Lyme-based band perform the album, which has already been hailed as a YouTube hit with fans from the USA.
The Pure Dirt Band are all from the West Dorset and east Devon area.
Mary, Nomad Smith and drummer John Hallett are from Lyme Regis. Bass guitarist Ade Taylor is from Axminster and lead guitarist Phil Birkhead is from Colyford.
“I’m thrilled to be playing a gig with the head,” said Mary.
“He’s a great musician and I hope lots of Woodroffe students will come and see this other side of him – and learn what I do in my night job.”
The album launch party, which starts at 7.30pm, is also attracting the big guns of Lyme, with at least three former mayors of the town attending – plus the current mayor, Sally Holman, in full regalia.
The single and title track of the album has been named Lyme’s Song Of Summer 2012 by Lyme Regis Radio, which will be broadcasting the launch show live on the internet.
Among the highlights of the show will be the Uplyme Morris Men ditching their traditional accordion and fiddle accompaniment to dance to the electric guitar sound one of the upbeat album’s tracks.
The concert is being held on Bastille Day as a nod of thanks to French Canadian band Mosquito B, who are diverting from their European tour itinerary in order to make the West Dorset date with Mary who they met some years ago.
To cement Lyme’s inter-continental link on the night, the entire concert will be broadcast live to an English theme pub in Quebec, which is Mosquito B lead singer Dan Louis Moisan’s local.
