Welcome to the Dragon Folk Club

Welcome to the official blog of the Dragon Folk Club, which meets for a singers night every Friday at The Bridge Inn, Shortwood, Bristol. Everyone is welcome whether you sing, play or just listen.

Wednesday 13 March 2024

First times and name checks

Boston Dock, Boston, Lincolnshire
Last week's session of the Dragon Folk Club had no theme and a wide variety of songs was sung, forty in all. It was good to see Steve C join us for the first time in a while.

This Friday's session (15th March) being just two days before Paddy's Day will have a theme of St Patrick and all things Irish. You may be interested to know St Patrick's full list of patronages in case you run out of Irish songs. They are:

Ireland, Nigeria, Montserrat, the Archdiocese of New York, the Roman Catholic Archdiocese of Newark (New Jersey), the Roman Catholic Archdiocese of Los Angeles, Boston (Massachusetts), Rolla, Missouri, Loíza, Puerto Rico, Murcia (Spain), Clann Giolla Phádraig, engineers, paralegals, and the Archdiocese of Melbourne. He is also invoked against snakes and sins.

Back to last week, Colin as MC started off the session with Boston Harbour (roud 613). We briefly discussed which Boston this referred to before deciding it was Boston, Massachusetts rather than Boston, Lincolnshire which has a man-made dock, opened in 1884, rather than a harbour. Nevertheless it is this dock which has inspired the featured image.

The only song of the night that doesn't feature in the YouTube playlist linked from "a selection" below is Paul's self-penned parody of Close the coalhouse door (Alex Glasgow) which he wrote while waiting in the car for Denny to have some dental treatment, and which he calls "Close the dentist's door". Of course "...there's blood inside".

There was only one song during the evening that was new to the Dragon database and that was from Colin, The pensioner's complaint (roud 1663).

Simon started a theme of firsts. The first song he sang at a folk club was Suzanne Vega's Tom's diner. The first song Denny sang in a similar situation was Oh! Oh! Antonio (roud V36813 - C W Murphy, Dan Lipton) and Paul's was Fathom the bowl (roud 880).

Steve arrived during the second rotation of the evening, and his first song of the evening was Jolly Waggoner (roud 1088).

Another ad hoc theme, first spotted by Colin, was songs with someone's name in the first line. I'll leave it to you to listen to the playlist and work out how many there were.

We had eight complete rotations of the room and while Steve missed the first Colin made up for it by starting a ninth just before the end, so his singing of New York girls (roud 486) brought us to a round tally of forty songs in the evening.

Now listen to a selection of songs sung during this session.

(Number of people present - 5 of whom 5 performed)

Tuesday 5 March 2024

St David's Day 2024

(AI image from Stable Diffusion)
Last week's Dragon Folk Club session actually fell on St David's Day, so no excuse was required to try to sing things related somehow, sometimes tenuously, to Wales... or even sometimes to whales (oh well). We were fine with four singers, but unusually we also had an audience member in the person of Denny's sister, who was a very welcome addition. I hope she enjoyed her evening; at least she laughed in all the right places.

This Friday's session (8th March) will have no theme, but then next week (15th March) we will be celebrating St Patrick's Day just two days early. I'll leave detailed suggestions of what you might like to do until next week's report.

We had a bumper set of 40 performances last Friday, and I should say that if any of them appear derogatory to Wales or the Welsh, no offence is intended. These are songs and poems from all sorts of different sources and of varying ages. Please enjoy all the recordings linked from "a selection" below in the spirit of entertainment.

There were just three performances for which no representative YouTube video could be found:

It was in fact Denny who kicked off proceedings with a song variously called "Always eat when you are hungry" or "Don't forget to breathe or else you'll die. The song features sung by Gracie Fields at the end of the film Molly and Me from 1945 and an earlier recording can be found at 2:05 in this Vitaphone short from 1928 called The Beau Brummels and featuring the vaudeville act Shaw and Lee. Denny however sang more words and to the tune Cwm Rhondda.

Simon took a leaf out of our friend Derek's book in order to follow the theme by trying and not always succeeding to sing songs from the repertoire of traditional Gower singer Phil Tanner. The Gower Wassail (roud 209) was partly successful, and Barbara Allen (roud 54, child 84) more so as was The oyster girl (roud 875, laws Q13), albeit not Tanner's version, but acquired from the singing of Rosie Upton (who is in the linked video). Although he had a couple more songs in this vein on file he cut his losses at this stage.

Colin's singing of The bells of Rymney (Idris Davies) gives me the chance to roll out a fun video made by our friend Gabe in which he visited each of the locations mentioned in the song/poem.

As people started to run out of Welsh songs (except for Colin who lasted out the night) we had a number of perfectly good if geographically random mining songs such as Paul with Close the coalhouse door (Alex Glasgow), and Denny with Down in your mine (Colin Wilkie).

Well' I've just about run out of time to write this report, so I'll just mention that Simon finished the evening with When all men sing (Keith Scowcroft, Derek Gifford).

Now listen to a selection of songs sung during this session.

(Number of people present - 5 of whom 4 performed)

Thursday 29 February 2024

A mixed bag

A Lincolnshire fenland farm in 2023
(Photo: Simon Meeds)
A happy band of four met for last week's un-themed session of the Dragon Folk Club. I'm rather late writing the report this week, so I will keep it short.

First of all let's get out of the way the advert for this Friday (1 March) when the theme will be St David's Day, which it is. Of course Welsh songs, songs about Wales and the Welsh, and at a push even songs about whales are very welcome, but really anything goes as long as it's acoustic, whether that's a song, a tune, or any other sort of performance.

And don't forget St David's other patronages, which compared to the other national saints of the UK and Ireland seem to be quite thin on the ground: Pembrokeshire (in South West Wales), Naas (the county town of County Kildare in Ireland), vegetarians, and poets.

To keep this brief I will mention just some of the less-often sung of the things we heard last week. You may think some of them are less-often sung for a reason, but I hope you will agree that others are gems.

I'll pause there just to note that we learnt the song Ivor tells the true story of dramatist, singer and composer Ivor Novello who was sentenced to eight weeks in Wormwood Scrubbs prison, serving four of those weeks, for misusing wartime petrol coupons. An admiring fan had stolen the coupons from her employer, but the court found that Novello was also culpable. This was a serious offence under rationing laws in wartime Britain.

Now listen to a selection of songs sung during this session - in fact it's all 36 of the songs we sang that evening.

(Number of people present - 4 of whom 4 performed)

Tuesday 20 February 2024

Valentine's Day 2024

(AI image from Stable Diffusion)
Last week's session saw us mark Valentine's Day albeit two days later than the rest of the world. A perfectly happy, not even too cold, band of four singers got the evening underway, only to be joined around the half-way mark of the evening by Keith G who we hadn't seen for a long time, and a welcome joiner he was. Keith said he hadn't played the guitar for a long time so we didn't hear his excellent playing, but he gave us some worthwhile, unexpected, unaccompanied contributions.

You can hear versions representing all of the songs sung by following the usual "a selection" link below.

Colin, MC as usual, started off the evening with The Eddystone Light (roud 22257).

I'll just give a mention to a few of the other contributions from the evening, a few of which were new to the Dragon database:

Sue finished off the evening with In other words (fly me to the moon) (Bart Howard).

This week's Dragon session (Friday 23 February) will have no theme so as usual anything goes as long as it's acoustic. The next flurry of themes (just for fun) will probably be some more saints' days: St David (1st March on the nose), St Patrick (15th March for 17th), and St George (26th April for 23rd). We'll let you know if we come up with any more ideas. In the meantime you are welcome to join us any Friday evening from 8:15pm.

Now listen to a selection of songs sung during this session.

(Number of people present - 5 of whom 5 performed)

Tuesday 13 February 2024

How to keep warm

(AI image from Stable Diffusion)
Last week's Dragon Folk Club session was enjoyable not least for some rarer songs being sung. Five singers met and managed not to freeze too hard by singing some songs of warmer climes and warmer times. You can hear all of those songs by following the "a selection" link below to a YouTube playlist.

Slightly bizarrely, Colin as MC started us off with The last shanty (Tom Lewis) and keeping to a maritime theme Simon, inspired by Rob's singing of The tow-rope girls on his last visit,which we remember is by Cicely Fox Smith and not by Tom Lewis at all, gave us Wave over wave (Jim Payne) to the same tune. Rob himself kept it nautical with The Greenland whale fishery (roud 347, laws K21), the first song of the evening totally new to the Dragon database.

We hadn't finished with the sea yet with Paul singing Roll Aladama Roll (roud 4710) and Denny selecting Bye-bye my Roseanna (roud 12380).

Colin's singing of The Roman gladiator (Bruce Campbell) recalled our friend Mike Starkey who we haven't seen for some time. Bruce Campbell, a Groundsman at Wethered's Brewery in Marlow, wrote the song around 1940.

Likewise, Simon's singing of Lasso the moon (Tom Mossman) reminded us of Tom of whom we receive regular reports, but who has not been able to join us for a long time. The song was written as a result of conversations between Tom and our late friend Ray Croll.

Another new song to the database was Mississippi summer (Si Kahn) sung by Rob, who also introduced another "new" song (definitely not new to the club though another entry in the database), General Taylor (roud 216).

Rob was definitely hot on finding gaps in the database because it was he who contributed I think it's going to rain today (Randy Newman). The final new song though came from Colin with Port of call (Kieran Halpin).

I'll leave you to listen to the rest of the songs from the evening. Suffice to say that the last song was The Holmfirth anthem (roud 1046) given to us by Denny.

This Friday's session (16th February) will be our Valentine's Day theme. Of course we know what St Valentine's Day means to most people, but bear in mind he patron saint of affianced couples, beekeepers, happy marriages, love, mentally ill people, plague, epilepsy, and Lesvos.

Now listen to a selection of songs sung during this session.

(Number of people present - 5 of whom 5 performed)

Tuesday 6 February 2024

Friends and neighbours

Sam Cooke in 1963
(Photo from Billboard)
It was a theme-less evening at the Dragon Folk Club last week and we were pleased to see seven singers gather including occasional visitor Malcolm who hopped over the bridge from Wales.

It was Malcolm who started off the session with Dion DiMucci's Here in America, written following the killing of fellow singer Sam Cooke in 1964.

There are 34 songs in the YouTube playlist linked from "a selection" below. There were 35 songs sung, which included a brand new song by Paul on its debut outing. It tells of his experiences several years ago with cancer and is entitled "Fathom my bowel". I have cheated somewhat by including a recording of the source song, obviously Fathom the bowl (roud 880).

The other song missing from the playlist was sung by Colin and is Harry Brown, written by our friend Mike Starkey, together with Pete McNab and tells the story of the last days of the Bristol sand dredger of that name and its final journeys to Barry and then to Bahrain.

The final song of the evening also came from Colin and provided a good opportunity for some singing along. It was Botany Bay (roud 3267).

This Friday's session (9 February) will be theme-less again in preparation for the Valentine's Day of the following week. See you at either of those sessions or on any Friday night except when occasionally notified here.

Now listen to a selection of songs sung during this session.

(Number of people present - 7 of whom 7 performed)

Tuesday 30 January 2024

Burns' Night 2024

The haggis season?
(Image with thanks to Paul Welcomme)
Last week's Dragon Folk Club session again saw four singers meet to make a noise. This time is was for Burns' Night, belated but only by one day. There were several performances which had in some way been touched by Rabbie, and most others had some connection with Scotland, some strong, some more tenuous.

You will find everything performed on the evening represented in the YouTube playlist linked from "a selection" below. I'll list some of the more Burnsian ones here, and sorry for any I miss:

This Friday (2 February) is a theme-less session so anything goes as long as it's acoustic. Bring your own theme if you wish. While are of course there for your enjoyment every Friday evening, the next theme should you wish to prepare will be a slightly belated Valentine's Day on 16th February. I'll give you some food for thought on that in next week's blog report.

See you there any Friday, but remember to wrap up warm at this time of year. We are promised a snowy blast this weekend in Bristol.

Now listen to a selection of songs sung during this session.

(Number of people present - 4 of whom 4 performed)