Blue, purple and green

Rain at Dungeness (Photo: Simon Meeds)

Last week's Dragon Folk Club session was unusual for this time of year having no theme. This Friday it will be our Halloween session, which gives quite a wide scope. Halloween is the eve of All Saints Day and is thought to be associated with the Celtic festival Samhain, when ghosts and spirits were believed to be abroad. If in doubt anything a bit spooky will do, and in any case as is always the case with our themes, it's entirely optional and anything goes as long as it's acoustic.

Back to last week, we were pleased to see Paul back and in fine voice after his serious surgical interventions, more of which later in the report. We also saw the return of occasional Dragon, John B without his sloop, but with his drum and harmonica (not at the same time).

Colin started things off with Galtee farmer (roud 9305) and John followed up with Freedom town (Delila Paz, Edgey Pires).

Paul had written a brand new song about his recent operation called Mandibulectomy blues (Paul Welcomme) and Denny gave us Half past eleven square (Cicely Fox Smith), which is about the clock in Armentiéres which remained at that time following the almost complete destruction of the town near the start of the First World War. The title of the poem and song comes from the nickname given by British soldiers to the place where it stood.

Simon finished the first rotation, not as he originally hoped with Jackson by the recently deceased Billy Edd Wheeler and his co-writer, Jerry Leiber, but with Ian "Nobby" Dye's Welsh back quay.

Apart from Paul's brand new song mentioned above there was one other sung during the evening which does not seem to appear on YouTube and is therefore not included in the playlist linked below from "a selection". That song was sung by Colin and is The sea dog, originally a poem in a book called Sea Lanes, edited by Burt Franklin Jenness, and later adapted into a song by Bob Zentz, with later adaptations also contributed by Charlie Ipcar.

As usual there were some songs new to the Dragon database, though some of them may have been sung previously at the club:

• Colin - Peg and awl (roud 4619)
• John - Purple rain (Prince)
• Denny - Evergreen (Barbra Streisand, Paul Williams)
• Colin - Shrimp boats (Paul Mason Howard, Paul Weston)

Simon finished off the evening by inviting everyone present to join in with Blow the man down (roud 2624).

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

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