Dogs and absent friends

The early part of this week's session was marked by some wining from Mike's dog, Indy. Mike was intending to leave at the interval anyway but made an early exit when things got too bad. This also influenced the singing, with several dog-themed songs, including Mike's own opener, Noah's ark shanty (Roud 318).

The first of two Steve's (Steve 1) continued the canine theme with Dido Bendigo (Roud 584). Simon's doggy offering was The smuggler's song (Rudyard Kipling). This last song was one of two sung from the repertoire of our late friend Ray Croll, the other being Buddy can you spare a dime (words: E. Y. "Yip" Harburg; music: Jay Gorney), sung by Roger.

Derek picked up on last week's special celebration of the life of another sadly missed friend, Pat Hyett, who died recently. He sang two songs from her repertoire. His first was The Gresford disaster (Roud 3089). The second of Pat's songs sung by Derek was The Locke Hospital.

The departure of Mike about a third of the way through the evening saw Colin taking over as MC and gave Derek the opportunity of singing some songs he can't sing with Mike present. These songs aren't exactly straight from Mike's repertoire though. John Barleycorn (Roud 164) was the first of these, being the more usual version rather than Mike's use of the tune Wir Pflügen. The other song in this category was Lowlands away, which Derek sings in a slightly faster time than Mike.

Chris got three songs in before her voice started to suffer: Ye banks and braes (Robert Burns), Scarborough Fair (Roud 12; Child 2) and Both sides now (Joni Mitchell).

Steve 2 came along to promote a Johnny Coppin and Paul Burgess concert on 17 October at St Helen's Church, Alveston. Steve introduced steel guitar to DFC, something I'm not sure I've heard here before, for Waiting for a train. That song was itself a response to Steve 1's singing of Good morning Mister railroad man (also known as Danville girl).

I don't seem to mention Colin's singing as often as I should; maybe it's because he digs out some fairly obscure material. I will put that right since he was MC for a good part of the evening. Two of Colin's this week were the Exmoor hunt song (Henry Newbolt) and A rumblin' in the land (Tom Paxton).

So that's all for this week. Please come along next week and sing, play, tell a story, recite a poem, whatever you can do, or just come and listen. Everyone is welcome.

Here's a selection of the songs sung during the session.

(Number of people present - 10, of which 8 performed)