Where is our recruiting sergeant?

The Female Drummer (Photo: Simon Meeds)

In the absence of Derek last week, perhaps watching his beloved Glamorgan narrowly beat Gloucestershire at the cricket, we were very pleased to see Tom again so soon after his last visit, bringing us up to a just quorate five singers for the evening.

Colin, MCing as usual, started things off with Matt McGinn's Manura Manya, followed swiftly by Geoff, with the song which inspired it, The Kerry Recruit (Roud 520, Laws J8).

The latter led Mike to propose a recruiting theme, for which he provided The Female Drummer (Roud 226). Geoff retorted with The Good Ship Calabar and Mike came back with The Bold Fusilier (Pete Coe, based on a traditional song).

Simon continued his Canadian theme of two weeks previously with The Wreck Of The Edmund Fitzgerald (Gordon Lightfoot), Peggy Gordon (Roud 2280), Lady Franklin's Lament (Roud 487, Laws K9) and Big Yellow Taxi (Joni Mitchell).

Tom took us back to 1924 with Trouble In Mind (Richard M Jones) and later appeared to refuse to sing, but all he was saying was that he wouldn't sing a song but would rather read his own poem, Grandad's Crecket about a thing his grandfather made but was it a stool or a perch or a hiding place, or all three?

Colin risked the wrath of Mike when he sang one of "his" songs, Banks Of Marble, written by Les Rice, a New York State apple farmer and one-time president of the Ulster County chapter of the Farmers Union. Geoff followed in a union theme with Part Of The Union (Richard Hudson, John Ford).

I've indulged myself a bit with the video linked for Colin's Bring Us In Good Ale (Roud 203), a song from a manuscript in the Bodleian library dating from around 1480, because it features two friends of mine, Damian Clarke and George Whitfield, then in the folk rock band Pressgang. I use it partly because Colin has seen them both but not in this particular type of full flow.

Simon finished up the evening in a return to the recruiting theme with a rousing rendition of The Rout Of The Blues (Roud 21098), managing to start it himself for a change without the help of Derek, which is lucky because Derek wasn't there.

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

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