In the Christmas spirit

This week's session was rather special since not only was it our Christmas party but also it was the first at what we have now decided will be the new venue for the Dragon Folk Club. Unfortunately we were a few down on the expected numbers due to illness but the seasonal buffet made the evening go well. We hope that the new venue will prove more conducive to lively sing-arounds and that we can persuade more people to join or rejoin us. If you are in the area on a Friday night please do drop by the New Inn in Westerleigh. But not too fast since we are having a week off; there will be no session on 26 December 2014 and we will be raring to go at this new venue on 2 January 2015.

A change of venue - The New Inn, Westerleigh

The New Inn, Westerleigh

I will get round to posting a report of this evening's session but before I even think of that there is a really important piece of news.

There will be no session on Boxing Day, 26 December 2014. The next session will be on 2 January 2015 at our new venue, The New Inn, Westerleigh. Full details can be found on the Location page of this blog.

I hope we have many happy sessions at the new venue. The reason for the change is that we have had several cancelled sessions recently because of double bookings and the pub we previously used has become rather rowdy.

Pre-Christmas lull and important news

Sheila Stewart

Before I get down to telling you what happened at this week's session there is very important news about next week's. Next Friday, 19 December, will be the club's Christmas party. As usual that means you may decide to bring contributions to a Christmas buffet as well as bringing your Christmas songs and tunes. However you need to be aware that the venue isn't The Bridge but is rather The New Inn at Westerleigh. This isn't yet an announcement of a permanent change to our venue but keep watching this blog for news. In the meantime please tell everyone you know in the folk world that our 19 December Christmas Party will be at this different venue.

With the parish announcement out of the way we can get straight into the session report, as Derek got straight into the session the way he meant to go on.

Fine singing this week - come back soon

Jean Ritchie

Apart from most of the usual familiar faces we were very pleased to welcome three new ones this week: Matt, Nonny, and Arian, who proved excellent performers, both with their harmony singing and individually. They have only recently started singing together and this was their first outing. I hope they make it the first of many to The Dragon Folk Club and that it might even become a habit.

Simon started off by pointing out that Monday 8th December is Jean Ritchie's 92nd birthday and singing her song, The L&N don't stop here anymore. Phil continued the railway theme with The runaway train (Robert E Massey, Harry Warren, Carson Robison) and George Allen (the dying engineer).

Matt, Nonny and Arian so far have only three songs together and they quickly got through those. I'm sure Mike would have appreciated their singing of Rolling down to old Maui (Roud 2005). Unfortunately he had just slipped out to calm down his dog. The second song from the trio was My lady's coach (probably Sabine Baring-Gould). The third and final song from their early repertoire was The deserter (Roud 493).