Btw, I've been thinking about the Special Guest thing and FWIW I reckon it is 'just' Richard, and the reason it hasn't been advertised is because of wanting to maximise the footfall for his tour. Once that's done and dusted it will be announced (to very little fanfare).
I was thinking this ( without the ‘just’ ) because there was clear publicity for Cropredy around the merch stall at his recent gigs, with a banner, flyers and bookmarks. ( Course, Dave Mattacks might have something to do with that as well).
RT is great, but may not necessarily swing it especially for people having seen him on tour …not that he wasn’t brilliant on tour, he was….but that many fans will have seen him in their local areas already.
Interesting thought but if that is the case why hasn’t he been advertised as appearing like every other time he’s appeared. Surely it would make sense to announce him hoping to sell more tickets. Mind you you could use the same argument if the special guest was Paul McCartney!! I have no evidence whatsoever but I do think it’s somebody big who maybe for contractual reasons he/she cannot be announced My guess and trust me it is a guess, is it’s one of three. James Taylor, Cat Stevens/Yousef or Roger Daltrey. Please don’t ask me why, I haven’t a clue!!😁😁. I just think it has to be someone big because otherwise why say it’s a surprise very special guest. RT to my mind wouldn’t be classed as a surprise very special guest because he’s appeared so often in the past. In a couple of months we’ll find out I guess!!
That's exactly what I've been saying until very recently - he's never been a special guest before, he's always been billed. But times are different now and maximising his own money making (which he's certainly been doing with his own ticket prices post-Covid) may have been higher up the requirement list than in previous years?
And given the very real and obvious problems with ticket sales this year, if it was one of those three, it makes literally no sense not to mention that fact in order to aid sales (although I do wonder how many Yusuf would actually add to the sales in any case)
Having seen Yusuf’s set at Glastonbury on TV last year, he might attract more people…it was totally different from the set he played at Cropredy previously and catered for fans of his past and present music, it was beautiful.