Campfire - Guy Fawkes 2018

Lewes Bonfire Night
(Photo by Simon Trimby)

Last week's "campfire" session to mark Guy Fawkes Night. We were a bit think on the ground in part because of a "lurgy" but we soldiered on and came up with quite a variety of material. This week there is no Dragon Folk Club session so don't turn up at The Bridge expecting music unless you want to be in the middle of a Charity Ladies' Night. But we are back at the songface on Friday 16 November with our Remembrance themed session. Please be there so we can make a noise for commemorating wars, condemning war or whatever you fancy.

So, back to last week, MC Colin started proceedings with Richard Digance's Boy Scout Song.

We carried on with mention of campfires such as Simon's Rocky Mountain High (John Denver), mention of camps as in Geoff's Hello Muddah, Hello Fadduh (Allan Sherman, Lou Busch) or mention of fires in Mike's The Fireship (Roud 4841).

Then we had plenty of songs that have been, or might be sung around a campfire including some that rarely see an outing at a folk club. Examples of the former, and in some cases the latter might be:

• Geoff - On Top Of Spaghetti (Sharon Ruth, Philip Anders)
• Mike - Five Constipated Men
• Colin - You'll Never Get To Heaven
• Simon - Kumbaya

We had one definite Guy Fawkes Night song from Colin which he wrote himself. Fragments I noted down were "Give us a penny or more if you can... My clothes are all raggedy... Now I'm assembled with plastic and string".

We had one coincidence (or was it) when Simon sang Stephen Foster's Oh! Susanna followed immediately by Colin with the same writer's Old Black Joe. Simon's rendition was slightly less faithful to the original words than the recording and Colin's slightly more faithful. You'll know what I mean if you listen to them. Bear in mind that Foster was writing these songs in the 1840s and 50s for the minstrel shows that were popular at the time.

It fell to Colin to close the session with a parody of The Happy Wanderer entitled I Love To Go A-Gorging:

I love to go a-gorging
Amid great gobs of food,
And as I do my abdomen
Continues to protrude. 

Calorie, calorah,
Calorie, calorah-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha
Calorie, calorah,
My body is obese. 

...

Here's a selection of songs sung during this session.

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