A welcome return

Redcliffe Wharf, Bristol (Photo: Simon Meeds)

Last Friday's Dragon Folk Club session was special to those of us who have been around for a while. Not only did we have a highly respectable head count, being joined by regular irregulars Roger, Stuart and Steve, but were able to welcome back to the fold the long absent Derek and Maggie, complete with new canine companion Bertie.

Like last week's, this week's session will be without a theme so as usual anything goes as long as it's acoustic.

Despite having memory issues and having not sung in public for three and a half years, Derek made a valiant attempt with four songs from his formerly vast repertoire. Both Derek and Maggie joined in with numerous choruses in fine voice and we hope to see them again soon.

Colin started us off with Last night I had the strangest dream (Ed McCurdy) and Roger followed him with This land is your land (Woody Guthrie).

Stuart had expected to be accompanied by Carrie, so when she turned out to be unavailable he had to quickly rework his set-list. His first was Bert Jansch's Soho (*).

Simon opened his account with Bonny ship the Diamond (roud 2172).

Paul sang Song for Ireland (Phil Colclough, June Colclough) and Denny stayed in the Irish Sea with The Ellan Vannin tragedy (Hughie Jones).

Derek offered us the first song he had sung at the beginning of his singing career, suggesting that this evening was the end of it (we hope not). The song was Roger Watson's Invalid miner (#).

Steve closed the first rotation with The rare ould times (Pete St John).

In the second rotation Stuart gave us a song new to the Dragon database which I believe was How long, how long blues (* Leroy Carr).

Derek's second song was one I think he calls The lobster (roud 149) though I wouldn't be surprised if he collected it from Cyril Barber who apparently called it Jimmy Johnson. His next song was Mary went to a tea party (# roud 24991) which he collected from Bertha Brown.

Colin sang Robb Johnson's More than enough (*).

The last "new" song of the evening came from Stuart and was Roger McGuinn's version of the traditional He was a friend of mine (*) which deals with the subject of John F Kennedy's assassination. Stuart's final performance was a repertoire first with Lady Franklin's lament (roud 487, laws K09).

Derek's final song was Jack Hall (roud 369, laws L5) and the final song of the evening, coming from Steve, was Leave her Johnny (roud 354).

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

(Number of people present - 9 of whom 8 performed)

In the above report songs new to the Dragon database (though no always new to the club) are marked with an asterisk (*) and songs not to be found in the playlist linked from "a selection" are marked with a hash (#).