DFC welcomes newcomers

Cooper and Toller (Vicky and Richard)

Thank you to all who attended last week's session, especially to Richard T and Vicky (Cooper and Toller) who paid their first visit to the club. Sorry that by the one song per person per round rule, we dragged you through most of your repertoire! We hope to see you again, and maybe by having more people at a future session we can be a little more lenient.

With Colin MCing, Derek opened the evening, referring to the recent death of Chris Roach of the Pill Whalers he sang the first song he heard Chris sing. Apparently Chris looked worried as he noticed Derek singing along loudly with the first line but was fine after the second when he realised they were singing the same, less well known version of the song. That song was Bill Westaway's version of Widecombe Fair. Derek challenged me to find a recording of Bill Westaway singing it, and since the Topic recordings on YouTube have been blocked in the UK (not removed as I first thought), I drew a blank there but lo, Smithsonian Folkways comes to the rescue.

So you want to be a record breaker?

A good crowd gathered last week at The New Inn including two visitors. Ros and Jan, who have obviously known Maggie S for a long time offered us their lovely singing.

Colin was MC and suggested an Australian theme since Australia Day had been just a few days before; some people managed to follow this last minute theme. When the evening was over Colin claimed that we had broken the record for the number of songs sung during a Dragon Folk Club session, so I feel duty bound to catalogue those songs as far as possible.

Valentine's Day 2015

CWAC Valentine's Day 1944

Ignoring the fact that it was Friday 13th, we concentrated on it being the day before Valentine's Day with a theme described by Mike as "Lust and Unrequited Love". I think everyone pretty much stuck to the theme even if we strayed even further than usual from the folk tradition. Roger set out on a tour of songs from the shows, claiming he was "doing a Simon", since Simon sang Summertime a couple of weeks ago.

Colin took the mantel of MC and got Mike to kick off with Black Sloven (Last Valentine's Day), which is not about love at all but is a hunting song. Nevertheless, it somehow got us off on theme.