DGBK – a.k.a. Dave, Gordon, Brian and Kenny are all founder members of Cruden Bay Folk Club, they are also former band members of the Rebo’s who along with drummer Alan Barrie, played together in that band around 10 years ago. Kenny, Dave and Gordon have all stepped down from REBO’s duties but they reunited with Brian early in 2023 to work on material for the Folk Club’s regular club nights. On the Beatles Theme Night in July 2023, Kenny was performing elsewhere with the Fonseca’s (another band formed out of the Cruden Bay Folk Club’s talented performers), so Sandy Gauld, the current bass player with the Rebo’s stepped in, so they’ve kept things in the family so to speak.

Prior to their involvement with the Rebo’s, Gordon and Kenny were both involved with Bratach Bana, and prior to that Gordon and Dave have been involved in a number of bands since they first met in the early 1980’s, including ‘A Man Called Horace, and ‘In The Rough’. Back in 2013, when all 4 were in the early throes of getting the Folk Club up and running, they were featured as a spoof band in a poster promoting a forthcoming ‘Burns’s Night’, the name of the spoof band was ‘Norfolk and Goode‘! There’s a lot of shared history amongst this band of troubadours and some evidence of these earlier personas can be seen in the images below.

Since hooking up again early in 2023, DGBK have also turned their hand to recording some of the songs they have played at club nights to a higher standard than is possible when recorded during live performances during club nights.

The DGBK project involves a combination of regular practice sessions, combined with the use of ‘desktop’ recording software they had come to learn about, and this led to an unexpected new dynamic which has helped them finesse their material before performances and build a better quality archive of what they have been working on. All 4 have installed ‘Audacity‘ recording software on their home computers, Audacity is an ‘open-source’ software programme that is free to install and use, and as it turns out, it’s pretty easy to make use of, I mean to say if 4 old blokes can work out how to use it, anyone can! In addition to the software, they all use a Focusrite audio interface to allow connection of an appropriate microphone to their computer. Apart from that, there’s little else required other than a pair of headphones, and if you want to make it feel like a real recording studio, it is worth getting a hold of a half-decent set of monitor speakers, and that’s you up and running.

Following the rehearsal sessions, they can all work remotely on their individual parts, adding them, when ready, to a shared file, building up to the finished tracks which you can listen to by clicking on the playlist above.

Hopefully, other club members will be inspired by this project and may consider setting up their own ‘home studio’ and adding their recordings to the Folk Club’s growing archive of songs which anyone can access through this website.

Norfolk And Goode!