Tunes help you breathe...

David Holgate's statue of Julian,
outside Norwich Cathedral,
completed in 2000
(Photo: Tony Grist)

At last week's Dragon Folk Club session it was great to be joined by first timer Nick, and a pleasant surprise to have a visitor to this predominantly singers' club who mostly played tunes. In fact Nick's weapon of choice is the mandola.

Our regular MC, Colin, started things off with Tom Lewis' Marching inland, which in a slightly obtuse way started a maritime or at least watery theme for many of the songs sung in the evening.

As usual I will mark songs new to the Dragon database (though not always new to the club) with an asterisk (*).

Next came Simon with Dougie McLean's Caledonia followed by Nick's Dragon debut with Egan's polka (*).

Paul had clearly been adding to his repertoire and sang The old miner (* roud 1136) while Denny gave us John Conolly's Fiddlers Green. And so endeth the first rotation.

As is traditional, I will mention everything Nick performed. All but the last were tunes played on the mandola. For the last one he borrowed Simon's guitar and sang; something we understand he is not accustomed to doing in public.

• Ten penny bit (*)
• Mairi's wedding
• Drowsy Maggie (*)
• John Ryan's polka (*)
• Moonstruck (* Kev Carmody)

Other songs new to the Dragon database were:

• Denny - Julian of Norwich (Sydney Carter) Julian lived in permanent seclusion as an anchoress in her cell, which was attached to St Julian's Church, Norwich. She died sometime after 1416.
• Colin - Essequibo River
• Colin - I fought the law (Sonny Curtis)

It fell to Simon to close the evening with When all men sing (Keith Scowcroft, Derek Gifford).

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

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

Almost normal

After a few weeks of ups and downs we were back to some sort of normality last week. The environment was acceptable, and all the usual people were present. All we were missing was a selection of welcome visitors, but we can't have everything and we have enjoyed a good variety of those in the previous weeks and months. Let's hope there are many more to come.

Colin, our usual MC, got the session going with Smith of Bristol. One source I've found claims that the song can trace its roots back to the 17th century and relates it to Spanish Ladies (roud 687), but I'm not so sure because I can't find that in any of my usual, mostly authoritative, sources. It is in Ireland sings: An anthology of modern and ancient Irish songs and ballads (Dominic Behan) [song number 83]. It doesn't have a roud number though it seems to be traditional.

Simon sang his own song, The story of John Twigg (Simon Meeds): the true story of an eccentric chap who lived in Alford, Lincolnshire.

Denny followed that with Young banker (roud 3321) and Paul gave us Adieu Sweet lovely Nancy (roud 165) which is related to Swansea town.

Sue promised something uplifting and sang The crawdad song (roud 4852) before Bob predictably brought us back down with Blood red river (roud 15807). Was Sue thinking of this later when she sang Red river valley (roud 756)?

Denny sang the first song of the evening new to the Dragon database with Charlotte Oliver's Idle women of the waterways about women who worked on the narrow boats during the Second World War in a similar way to the more familiar Women's Land Army whose members worked in the fields.

The next new song to the database was Colin's rendition of Ewan MacColl's Browned off. While this song may be new to the database it certainly isn't new to the club having been sung by our late friend, Pat. Pat was from the North East of England, so it was fitting that the songs which followed were too: Simon with The Lambton Worm (roud 2337), and Denny with Teeside Bridges (Erik Gooding), another song new to the database. Erik, a mathmatics student, worked a holiday job with the Dorman Long Company in Teeside as steel stocks piled high. Erik also worked for a year in Australia as a maths teacher at Scotch College in Melbourne.

Paul suggested that Country life (roud 1752) was first sung by music hall artist Harry Linn. Linn certainly wrote a related song, also categorised as 1752 by roud, but his song: Eggs for Your Breakfast in the Morning is rather different. What I don't know is which song came first. The Watersons got Country Life from Mick Taylor, a sheepdog trainer of Hawes in Wensleydale.

Bob added one to the database with Gram Parsons' Luxury liner and the last new entry of the evening was for Denny with Icy Acres (Colin Wilkie).

Sue closed the session with Ian Tyson's Four strong winds.

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

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

Rare finds

Mike Starkey (Photo: Simon Meeds)

At last week's Dragon Folk Club session it seems that we made a theme of singing less frequently sung songs from our repertoire, with a possible sub-theme of singing Mike's songs after his appearance at the previous week's session.

Listen to the YouTube playlist linked from "a selection" at the bottom of this report to hear everything we sang - I even recorded a couple specially to give us a full house this week. Here is a run down of a few highlights.

After Mike Starkey's first visit to the club in a long time last week, Colin started off proceedings this week with Southern Star, written by Mike Starkey and Dave Marshall. Sorry for my dodgy rendition - Colin's was much better. This was a first for Colin according to the database, though we had of course heard Mike sing it many times before.

Simon followed along with Tracy Chapman's more solemn Behind the wall.

Colin added to the Dragon database Steve Knightley's Widecombe fair, a mysterious whodunnit rather than the traditional song of that name.

Simon sang The oyster girl (roud 875, laws Q13) for possibly the second time; a song he acquired from the singing of Rosie Upton.

Colin had acquired a song from the singing of Rose Little who used to be an occasional visitor to the Dragon Folk Club. That was A maid in Bedlam (roud 578). His next song, which he remembered Ray Croll singing, was London Danny (Jez Lowe). Colin has sung this at least twice before: once just a few weeks ago, and also on 20th July 2018, which may have been his first time.

Simon tried a debut with The hog-eye man (roud 331) and that was followed by Colin singing the American version of The miner's lifeguard (roud 3510) - we often hear the British (Welsh?) version, but rarely this one.

Simon has sung The Hippopotamus song (Michael Flanders and Donald Swann) in Latin before, but only now is there a YouTube video to go with it (imperfect I'm afraid). We don't know the author of this version, but we do know that they don't claim it to be perfect Latin, but at least is rhymes and is able to be sung. Ian Wallace sang it at his inauguration as Rector of St Andrews University.

The final song new to the Dragon database was Sail away ladies (roud 17635). Here Colin didn't sing the hit version credited to Bill Varley, Wally Whyton and first recorded by The Vipers Skiffle Group, but the remarkably similar, earlier version, sung and probably collected by Uncle Dave Macon.

Simon finished the evening in time-honoured fashion with When all men sing (Keith Scowcroft, Derek Gifford)

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

(Number of people present - 2 of whom 2 performed)

The Curate's Egg

In front of the speakers without earplugs
(Photo: Simon Meeds)

[Edit: Just in case it isn't clear, the attached photograph was not taken at The Bridge last week. It is simply intended to suggest the experience we unfortunately had during the session. Read on to see what I mean. The photograph was taken about five years ago at a different event and the girls are not known to us - Simon was an official photographer at that event. We only have acoustic performances at the Dragon Folk Club]

Last week's Dragon Folk Club session wasn't the best, hence the title. The Curate's Egg is known to be good in parts and it was definitely the singers present who were the good part of our evening. Everything else was rather unfortunate, especially since we had our previous MC, Mike, present for the first time since mid-May 2022 (according to the blog records), as well as first time visitor Rob.

There were two issues which conspired to make this possibly our worst ever experience at The Bridge. There was a loud, live band in the main bar, and the gents toilets were out of action. The latter meant that people were constantly filing through our room to the back-up toilets (no pun intended) and while they were all polite, it meant the door was constantly opening and allowing in the full blast of the band's music. We posted a man on the door to keep it closed as much as possible, and we all sang at the top of our voices, but in the end it was just unworkable and we had to give up early.

This Friday should be much better - it certainly couldn't be worse.

Colin, the MC as usual, started off proceedings with The wild goose shanty (roud 328). Mike declared that there are many versions of that song, so he sang The wild goose shanty (roud 328); it's just like old times! If only our friend Derek had been there, we'd probably have got a third.

Rob does his own songs and poems, so naturally they were all new to the Dragon database, and in any case being his first visit they would all be mentioned here. His first was The Napoli (Rob Barratt), about the looting from the ship of that name which was beached at Branscombe in 2007.

Mike marked the recent fiftieth anniversary of the death of Adge Cutler and challenged all present to sign along to the chorus of Adge's Thee's got'n where thee cassn't back'n, hassn't.

Continuing the comedy Rob recited his poem The torpedo turd (Rob Barratt) about an impressive souvenir of the previous user of a toilet. This is one of only two performances of the evening not represented in the YouTube playlist linked from "a selection" below.

Talking of toilets, it was while Simon was singing Mary McCloud's House of the rising damp that we were joined by Sam on his way back from gaining some relief. While he didn't sing to us he did linger for a whole round of the four singers in the room and was very appreciative, listening also to Colin singing Hotel California (Don Felder, Don Henley, Glenn Frey), Mike with The Mary Ellen Carter (Stan Rogers), and Rob with Bloody who? (Rob Barratt).

The second and last performance not represented in the YouTube playlist was Colin's singing of Chris Sugden's Rolling drunk, a parody of Rolling home (John Tams).

Mike gave us Quare bungle rye (roud 2404).

Rob was inspired to write his poem Seventeen in Aberdeen (Rob Barratt) by a television weather forecast. After this things started to disintegrate and while we managed a few more songs we knew we were onto a loser.

I'm not quite sure why our friend Allie came walking though given that it was the gents toilet out of action as far as I was aware, but we introduced her to Rob and explained she was on our side and sometimes could be persuaded to sing. Indeed on her way back to the bar she gave us a couple of verses of Ian Campbell's Here come the navvies.

Colin soldiered on with Neil Young's After the goldrush, Simon gave top volume to Jake Thackray's Isabel makes love upon national monuments, and Mike completed the slightly abridged evening with Whip jamboree (roud 488); I assume it was actually Bristol Channel jamboree and therefore it is that which I linked.

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

(Number of people present - 6 of whom 5 performed - including Sam and Allie who each joined us for a short time and contributed to the evening)

Three score and ten minus thirty

Today's news is tomorrow's chip paper
(Photo: Simon Meeds)

Last week's Dragon Folk Club session wasn't notable for there being a large number of singers, and there were no visitors, first timers, or long lost souls. Nevertheless those who were present had a pretty good time, a good sing and a good chat, which are the most important things when we meet.

It was the first time for a while that I've known before the end of the session what would be the featured picture in the report. In this case Denny sang a song which happened to coincide with an image I had created only a couple of days before for another purpose. I hope you realise it isn't mean to be disrespectful, but rather is a restatement of a principle understood by journalists for a very long time. I did check, and fish and chip shops started to become popular in Britain around 1860.

The title of this report refers to the same song, but also to the fact that we sang forty songs in the evening.

I'll keep this week's report very short because I've let the time roll on and I would have preferred to have it finished by now. Nevertheless you can hear all but three of the songs we sang in the playlist linked from "a selection" below. The remaining three are mentioned here and marked with a hash (#). Also two of the songs sung were new to the Dragon database and they are marked with an asterisk (*).

Colin started us off with Goodbye to you, dear Mabel (# Don Thompson).

Simon harked back to the previous week's unofficial Canada theme with Lukey's boat (roud 1828).

Denny took us to see The chickens in the garden (roud 2552) and Paul finished off the first rotation with Rose of Allandale (roud 1218 - words Charles Jefferys, music Sidney Nelson).

Colin provided the first new entry in the database with Swift and bold (celer et audax) (* Steve Knightley), maybe a subtle reference to the Olympic motto (citius, altius, fortius) while the games progressed in Paris.

As the evening progressed Denny sang the song I previously alluded to: Three score and ten (roud 16873 - William Delf).

Colin challenged this scribe by singing the almost untraceable Base over apex (# Bob Barratt,Tony Baylis). Later he made an addition to the database with History lesson (* Leon Rosselson)

Paul had a last practice of his own song Fathom my bowel (# Paul Welcomme) which is of course modelled on Fathom the bowl (roud 880) and provides a humourous take on his own history of cancer.

Paul was asked to finish off the session and he did that with When all men sing (Keith Scowcroft, Derek Gifford).

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

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

Canadian Pacific

Ships in English Bay and Burrard Inlet, Vancouver
(Photo: Simon Meeds)

Last week's Dragon Folk Club session was another corker, but not this time a matter of quantity, but rather of quality and interest. We were joined by another newcomer. Mandy isn't from around here, but she does visit regularly so there is hope that she will be back. She certainly seemed to enjoy the evening and commented how friendly and welcoming we are.

There's quite a lot to tell so hold on to your hats. I'll mark songs new to the Dragon database, but not necessarily to the club, with an asterisk (*). Of course, as it traditional, I will mention all of newcomer Mandy's songs.

We started off with no official theme, but things moved on quickly.

Colin, MC as usual, started us off with Christy Moore's Viva la Quinta Brigada (*).

Denny's first song of the evening was Holmfirth Anthem (roud 1046) and Paul gave us The ship in distress (roud 807 *). Simon found safe ground with Tom Paine's Bones (Graham Moore) - note that for the first time I have found a recording of the author singing his own song.

Mandy's debut at the club was an Appalachian version of Black Eyed Susan (roud 560, laws O28). Apparently the words come from a poem written in 1720 by John Gay and entitled Sweet William’s Farewell to Black-Eyed Susan.

Bob and Sue arrived just in time to join the end of the first rotation, but elected to take their time and skip to the second. Bob's first offering was You got gold (John Prine), which started a bit of a friendly Prine-off between Bob and Mandy.

Sue meanwhile sang Love of the Common People, known by many from the 1983 recording by Paul Young, but first recorded in 1967 having been written by John Hurley and Ronnie Wilkins.

Mandy's second song of the evening was I'm so lonesome I could cry from Hank Williams, another name that would crop up again.

Colin asked me to check whether he had previously sung Jez Lowe's London Danny at the club and I confirm he did on 20th July 2018, so almost exactly six years ago. He may have sung it at other sessions, but I think that would have been the first since I mentioned in the report on that session that it was a song previously sung by our late friend Ray Croll.

Mandy joined the previously mentioned John Prine mini-theme set by Bob with That's the way the world goes round (*).

Bob followed the Hank Williams mini-theme set by Mandy with Lost highway, which wasn't written by Williams, but by Leon Payne.

It was Simon's singing of The Ryans and the Pittmans (roud 21113), which is a Newfoundland version of Spanish ladies, that caused Mandy to admit that she had lived for several years in Canada. She was pleased to be reminded of that time and that caused another not-so-mini theme of Canada to be established. With all these themes and it also being remarked that we sang quite a lot of railway songs, you really couldn't move for themes at the session - all very optional of course.

Mandy's singing of Stan Rogers' Barrett's Privateers allows me to link one of my favourite music videos from YouTube. Bear with the brief preamble and you will see a group of people really enjoying themselves. It is an excerpt from a documentary and I'm sure someone told me that during several takes the crew kept everyone's whisky glasses topped up, which perhaps explains the mood. Don't you just wish you were there? Of course this continued the Canadian theme.

Having not so far mentioned the railway theme, in quick succession we had Bob singing Golden Rocket (Hank Snow), Sue with City of New Orleans (Steve Goodman), and Denny with King of the railway (Roy Duffield), the latter being the only song of the evening not to feature in the YouTube playlist linked from "a selection" below. I note now that Hank Snow was a "Canadian-American" - another theme ticked.

Simon followed the Canadian and Stan Rogers themes with Northwest Passage and Mandy introduced us to Canadian band Blue Rodeo by singing Falling down blue (Jim Cuddy, Greg Keelor). Sue's Canadian offering was Ian Tyson's Four strong winds.

Denny took us to Canada via Chile with 150 days out from Vancouver (Cicely Fox Smith, Tom Lewis).

Apart from Mandy's final song of the evening, the Canadian I'se the b'y (roud 1340), we finished with another rush of train songs: Simon with the L&N don't stop here anymore (Jean Ritchie), Bob with New train (another John Prine song), and finally Sue with Elizabeth Cotten's Freight train.

So, we finished having sung a total of forty songs. Mandy was very game, entertaining us on her first visit with seven songs. If you are thinking of visiting us or even becoming a Dragon regular, don't worry, no one is going to complain if you pass on some rounds - you don't need a vast or even well practised repertoire to join us at the Bridge on a Friday night.

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

(Number of people present - 7 of whom 7 performed)

A record breaking performance

At last week's Dragon Folk Club session we didn't seem particularly rushed, the songs weren't particularly short and we certainly weren't devoid of chat, but nevertheless we seem to have broken the accepted previous Dragon record of 47 songs sung in an evening. We sang a total of 49 songs!

It all started off with Colin performing Dance ti thy daddy (roud 2439), possibly better known as When the boat comes in, having been the theme tune to a TV programme of that title. Simon sang Strike the bell (roud 4190) and Steve completed the first rotation with Sam Hall (roud 369, laws L5).

With so many songs I am sure you will forgive me if I pick out a bare minimum and invite you to listen to the rest via the YouTube playlist linked from "a selection" below.

There are four songs not included on that playlist:

• Colin - Convict's complaint
• Steve - When Adam was first created (roud 728)
• Colin - The bos'n, the gunner and me (Francis Barron, Henry Trotère)
• Colin - Windy old sailors (Chris Sugden - assumed) - sung by The Kipper Family and found only as a title on an obsolete version of the Sid Kipper website - I'm still not sure where Colin found the words, because it doesn't seem to have been recorded

Six songs were new to the Dragon database, though not necessarily in all cases new to the club:

• Simon - Percy Shaw (Roger Davies)
• Colin - Waiting for wages (Jill MacLean, Michael Raven or more likely traditional)
• Colin - Wicklow hills (Pierce Turner)
• Colin - Heaven's a bar (Tim Laycock)
• Colin - Drinking rum and raspberry
• Colin - Roots (Steve Knightley)

Colin returned to Steve Knightley for the last song of the evening, which was Cousin Jack.

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

(Number of people present - 3 of whom 3 performed)