How much?

Last week's session saw just four of us meet at The Bridge, but we sang until we were told that the pub was closing for the evening which isn't bad. Closing time was only a few minutes earlier than usual, so it wasn't a particularly short session.

MC Colin started us off with Bryn Phillips' Silver and gold.

Mike, in part taking inspiration from his whippet / greyhound cross Indy, sang only dog-related for this session:

• Doctor Mack (roud 1861)
• Boston harbour (roud 613)
• The hounds are out (roud 24901)
• Dead dog cider (Trevor Crozier)
• Last Valentine's day (roud 6475)

The session was rounded off by Geoff singing Love is pleasing (roud 1049).

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

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

Valentine's Day 2020

(Photo: Simon Meeds)

At our Valentine's Day session it was great to see Mel return for his second visit and even better that he indicated it is likely to become a regular occurrence. There were many songs of love and/or lust and a few which were simply calendar-relevant.

Colin, our MC, started things off with Jan Knuckey.

Let's get out of the way the songs which referred to the calendar rather than to love and lust. The ones I spotted were Mike's Last Valentine's Day (Roud 6475) and Derek's Bold Princess Royal (Roud 528, Laws K29).

Simon's slightly sideways glance at Valentine started with reminiscences of a love lost with Harvey Andrews' Margarita. Mike's more conventional approach, if with some playing hard-to-get was Come Write Me Down (Roud 381).

Valentine's Day 2018

A blindfolded, armed Cupid (1452/66)
by Piero della Francesca

Last week's Dragon Folk Club session was our closest to Valentine's Day, so it was our usual seasonal theme of Love and Lust, a theme which had a very high hit rate. In fact I think that there were only three songs that didn't somehow connect to the theme, but even they were for very good reason.

The first was Derek with what he said was Ewan MacColl's version of Windy Old Weather. This was the completion of his final pair of songs from the previous week's session. I managed to find the lyrics in this document (page 73) but without attribution. I did however manage to find reference to it in relation to a radio programme "Singing the fishing" which was one of the Radio Ballads series (broadcast 16 August 1960, repeated 6 November 1960) which included in its credits Ewan MacColl and Peggy Seeger.

The other two off-theme songs should really have been admirably on theme. Derek sang The Bold Princess Royal (Roud 528, Laws K29) "On the 14th of February..." and Mike sang a hunting song, Last Valentine's Day (Roud 6475).

Valentine's Day - no massacre

The date was 14 February, Valentine's Day, so it seemed obvious that we should sing love songs, and so we did but at the Dragon Folk Club things are never quite that simple. Mike started off by announcing that the theme would be anti-love songs, something even he didn't stick to, but we did have some lust among the romance.

As last week, maybe it's becoming a (good) habit, Maggie S started us off with a poem by "Rick from Portishead" called A Valentine. Mike followed that up with Come write me down (The wedding song) (Roud 281).