May the force be with you

Stokes Croft, Bristol
Not too far from Gloucester Road
(Photo: Simon Meeds)

We had another cracking session at the Dragon Folk Club last week. Despite five of the previous week's eight singers being absent we still met as six and managed to sing a whopping forty two songs. It's not quite a record, but it was a very good effort.

We were a little late getting round to our annual "May" theme this year because of some little royal event or other. We sang a reasonable number of songs about the month of May before we started to move to songs about people called May and songs including the word "may". I won't try to work out which were which because I would no doubt fail somewhere.

In the absence of Colin, Simon was MC and started the evening with Claudy Banks (roud 266, laws N40).

In his absence Denny took as her own one of the songs Paul usually sings with Rosabella (roud 21134). Geoff borrowed Galway Shawl (roud 2737) from Simon. No, we don't really own songs, but he did make an unnecessary apology. Steve C gave us Just as the tide was a-flowing (roud 1105).

Steve and Sue opened their account with Maggie May (roud 1757), closely followed by Nobody knows you when you're down and out (roud 18521 - Jimmy Cox). And so ended the first of seven tours of the room during the evening.

I'll mention the songs new to the Dragon database although that doesn't necessarily mean they haven't been sung here before. Unsurprisingly, most of them come from relative newcomers to the club, Steve and Sue whose repertoire is not yet a matter of record.

• Steve and Sue - Run for home (Alan Hull)
• Steve and Sue - Roll me up and smoke me when I die (Willie Nelson, Buddy Cannon, Rich Alves, John Colgin, Mike McQuerry)
• Steve and Sue - Gloucester Road (Andrew McGillan - "inspired by John Denver")
• Steve and Sue - Walking back to Blueberry Hill (Billy Mitchell - about Fats Domino)
• Steve and Sue - Killing the Blues (Rowland Salley)
• Steve and Sue - My walking shoes (don't fit me anymore) (Paul Williams, Jimmy Martin)
• Steve and Sue - You ain't goin' nowhere (Bob Dylan)
• Steve and Sue - Corinne, Corrina (roud 10030 - first recorded by Bo Carter)
• Geoff - I did what I did for Maria (Mitch Murray, Peter Callander - recorded by Tony Christie)
• Steve and Sue - Further on up the road (Bruce Springsteen)

The only song of the evening not on the YouTube playlist linked from "a selection" below was Steve C's When Adam was first created (roud 728).

The session was completed by Steve and Sue performing Bob Dylan's I'll be your baby tonight.

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

(Number of people present - 6 of whom 6 performed)

The last buds of May?

Bessie Smith (Photo: Carl Van Vechten)

Last week's session again had no theme but again we managed to squeeze out some May themed songs between us. This week again will have no theme, so any sort of performance will be just fine as long as it's acoustic.

Colin, the MC, started us off by twisting May a little as a name, and singing a song of Sam May, which I have failed to trace. It however inspired Derek to think of using "May" as a name and did a version of Tom Paxton's brief The Ballad Of Spiro Agnew but re-titled The Ballad Of Theresa May.

Mike's first May contribution was Bonny Black Hare (Roud 1656) "On the fouteenth of May...".

Having failed at the first fence the previous week, Simon just about managed Claudy Banks (Roud 266, Laws N40) this week which served to deprive Mike of one of his candidates for the evening.