Forward planning

(Photo: Simon Meeds)

Thanks to everyone who came along to our Dragon Folk Club session last Friday. I believe a good time was had by all. We just need to keep up the flow of new or visiting performers and audience members. Don't be afraid. We meet every Friday in the pool room of The Bridge Inn, Shortwood, Bristol (UK), BS16 9NG. Anything goes as long as it's acoustic, but we have some optionally themed sessions coming up:

• 17 February - Valentine's Day (Love, Affianced couples, against fainting, beekeepers, happy marriages, mentally ill, plague, epilepsy - even a massacre)
• 3 March - St David's Day (Wales, Pembrokeshire, Naas, vegetarians, poets)
• 17 March - St Patrick's Day (Ireland, Nigeria, Montserrat, Archdiocese of New York, Roman Catholic Archdiocese of Newark, Roman Catholic Archdiocese of Los Angeles, Boston, Rolla, Missouri, Loíza, Puerto Rico, Murcia (Spain), Clann Giolla Phádraig, engineers, paralegals, Archdiocese of Melbourne)
• 21 April - St George's Day (England, agricultural workers, farmers, field workers, soldiers, archers, armourers, equestrians, cavalry, saddle makers, chivalry, peacekeeping missions, skin diseases, lepers and leprosy, syphilis; sheep, shepherds, scouting)

Don't forget we are still there on other Fridays, just without a theme... unless one crops up by accident.

Back to last week, Colin was as usual the MC and he started things off with Billy Edd Wheeler's Coal Town Road. Simon followed with Elusive Butterfly (Bob Lind).

Bob's first offering was Sing Me Back Home which was written and first recorded by Merle Haggard, and Sue gave us Take Me Home, Country Roads (Bill Danoff, Taffy Nivert, John Denver).

Colin went off on a maritime theme of his own, starting with Stan Rogers' Mary Ellen Carter, one from the repertoire of our friend Mike Starkey, and a fine one to get everyone singing. Meanwhile Simon tried to out-miserable Bob with Tracy Chapman's Behind the Wall and Bob and Sue, performing together, went off in their own direction entirely with Spanish Harlem (Jerry Leiber, Phil Spector).

One of only two songs from the evening not represented in the linked YouTube playlist (see "a selection" link below) is Sue's own song Recycled Teenager, which tells of the goings-on at a ukulele jam.

The other unrecorded song is Simon's Story of John Twigg which tells of an eccentric chap who lived in Alford, Lincolnshire. The singing of this song was brought about because Colin mentioned our fried Derek's assertion that any folk song could be sung to one of two tunes: Blow the Man Down or Villikins and his Dinah. John Twigg is put to the latter, but a conversation ensued that few people seem to sing Villikins and his Dinah (roud 271, laws M31), so Simon gave it a go.

Colin followed this with Dick Darby The Cobbler (roud 872) and so Simon finished off the evening with Michelle Shocked's Memories of East Texas.

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

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