No hopers, jokers, rogues and... loggers?

Edith Fowke

After a couple of well-populated weeks we were slightly down on numbers. Colin had met someone who had spoken of going to a folk club at The George in Chipping Sodbury in the early 1970s. Mike remembered it well and we were treated to various stories of that club, which was apparently a strictly singers' (no instruments) off-shoot of a more general club.

This will be the last time for a few weeks that I'm able to include the customary links to YouTube, so make the most of them while they're here. If you enjoy listening to my playlists you might like to visit some of the older blog posts until normal service is resumed. Despite the lack of video links I hope that there will be blog reports, so do look in to see what's been going on.

Richard was MC and started us off with The Boy That Burned In Berryville Jail which was followed by Lesley's rendition of the Kipper Family's Bored Of The Dance.

Mike was very topical ("Now is come September, the hunter's moon begun") with All Among The Barley (Roud 1283). I hope Colin wasn't referring to those assembled when he sang No Hopers, Jokers And Rogues (Rupert Cristie).

On the second round Richard sang a song which he called A Lumbering We Go, which apparently comes from Edith Fowke's "Lumbering Songs Of The North Woods". I understand that this particular song is a hybrid of two different versions of The Logger's Boast and another song called Bung Your Eye.

Before making an early exit, Phil gave us several of his American songs, one of those being Rovin' Gambler (Roud 498).

Last week Derek sang The Donibristle Mossmoran Mining Disaster. He said he usually sings that together with another song, so he sang the second this week, which is his own They Don't Sing Me Anymore which is about singers writing their own songs and not singing the old songs. One verse uses as an example the aforementioned mine disaster song.

It was also Colin who was asked to round off the evening, which he did with Sydney Carter's Crow On The Cradle.

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

(Number of people present - 8, of which 7 performed)