Singer/songwriter duo Yvonne Lyon and Boo Hewerdine have been touring their wonderful album Things Found in Books across Scotland this May and on Friday 29th, we were delighted to welcome them to the University Library for the Stirling leg of their tour.
Things Found in Books is an album of songs written in response to a notice board in Culzean Castle’s second-hand bookshop which pays tribute to all the notes, photos, letters, postcards and fragments of people’s lives that get left behind in the books they read. The concert weaves these stories with Yvonne and Boo’s own, creating an evening of nostalgic, hopeful, warm and funny storytelling – with a couple of sing-a-long songs near the end and an impromptu but brilliant ode to the severed hand a certain member of the library team had pinned to our own Things Found In Books noticeboard!
While we weren’t the first library to host Yvonne and Boo on their tour, we certainly set ourselves apart by hosting the gig within the main library space, turning Level 2 into a concert hall for the evening. It was absolutely wonderful to bring guests from across the University and further afield (including some guests who stumbled across the concert by accident, as we hoped some folk might!) into the library for something sociable and something so uniquely placed to remind us of the joy of reading.
Our sincere thanks to the Stirling Fund here at the University and those staff, alumni and friends who donate to make the Fund a reality. Their generosity enabled us to put on the concert free of charge to all.
We also cannot go without saying that the magnificent Pathfoot Press made us custom bookmarks for the event to hand out to guests which were widely adored and the spares taken away by the band who loved them. Thank you to Dawn for her time and creativity!
Putting on any event naturally takes a village and colleagues across IS and the Macrobert were wonderfully generous with their support and skills so to everyone who advertised, moved furniture, gave advice, and, ultimately, came along to share the evening – thank you for creating such a gorgeous night! What a wonderful evening!
