THIS week I'm back in Canada where the snow is already falling! Not here in Ontario where my musical cohort James Keelaghan and I are playing tonight, but a foot of the white stuff landed in Calgary last night, and that's where we're headed next week. Luckily we can hire a dog-sled at the airport! I hope you're all a bit warmer in the UK, where there's plenty of good music to wrap yourself around. Highlights this week begin tomorrow night, when West Country songwriter Kitty MacFarlane is at Middlesbrough Town Hall, where there'll be a lot of great folk concerts coming up in the next couple of months. Not to be missed is the great Canadian band Vent du Nord who will be at Gateshead's Sage on Saturday, and top Lancashire singer and multi-instrumentalist Brian Peters is at The Customs House in South Shields on Sunday. Finally, the ever-popular Anglo-American duo Cathryn Craig and Brian Willoughby are back at the Benedictine Social Club in Cramlington on Wednesday. Don't forget that Hartlepool Folk Festival kicks into gear on October 19th. It's a great line-up and tickets are selling fast, so don't delay. Meanwhile, we just crossed the border at Niagara Falls, so it's into the barrel and off we go for week two of my North American tour. More next week.