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| Herring Gull on rubbish (Photo: Simon Meeds) |
We didn't have high hopes of last week's Dragon Folk Club session, coinciding as it did with
Sidmouth Folk Festival and therefore automatically ruling out some of our regular singers. However, things were looking up when Mark appeared. It was Mark's first visit to the club, not surprisingly since he is a regular at
Belper Folk Club, which is based in Derbyshire.
We were settling down to a good evening of four singers with one visitor when who should come through the door but our old friends Richard and Lesley who have long lived in far flung corners of Wales. We owed the visit to their wedding anniversary celebrations which would take place in Bristol over the weekend. Their profiles on this blog which are linked above are unsurprisingly a little out of date.
Colin, MC as usual, started things off with Butter and cheese and all (roud 510).
For his first song of the evening Roger had been inspired by a song he heard Colin sing some time ago. Tom Paxton's Ramblin' boy has therefore entered his repertoire.
Simon stayed on safe ground with Graham Moore's Tom Paine's bones.
Mark's first song was in fact a medley: Rag Fair / Down Where the Drunkards Roll from the singing of Damien Barber and Mike Wilson. The component songs are of course Rag Fair (* roud 17180) and Down where the drunkards roll (Richard Thompson).
Richard marked his return to the Dragon with Lemady (* roud 193) and Lesley completed the first rotation with Pleasant and delightful (roud 660, laws O30).
Mark's second song was another medley, though of his own manufacture with both component songs being from the 2006 version of the BBC Radio Ballads. They were The Price (* John Tams) and Steelos (John Tams).
Yorkshire native Richard contributed his first Welsh of the evening with Fflat Huw Puw (* J Glynne Davies). Hugh Pugh's family came from the Dolgellau area, but he was born in the Princess Basin Liverpool, and at one time in his career, became master of the small flat ‘Ann’. The ‘Ann’ was built in Frodsham in 1799, registered in Liverpool till 1848, then sold to Caernarfon on August 4th 1848. Flats were shallow boats that were used to sail up rivers and the Ann sailed the Mersey, Dee, and the river Conway as far as Trefriw. She was 60 tons, had one mast and three of a crew. Her exact measurements were 61.8 ft long. 15ft 1in wide, and a draft of 6ft. 6in. She was described thus ‘Rigged with lifting Bowsprit, square sterned, Carvel built, has neither Galleries or figurehead’. Here's more of the story.
Although Lesley sang one of her old favourites, it seems it had never previously made it to the Dragon database, it being A blacksmith courted me (* roud 816).
Roger gave us one of this own songs: Expectations (*# Roger Stanleigh).
Mark sang what he suggested was Roger Watson's best song: Watercress-o (*). The song, written in 1965, was inspired by Roger's grandmother’s recollections of a watercress seller who had visited the back-to-back houses of the mining village where she had lived as a young woman. His grandfather had been a typical son of a mining family; he left school at the age of twelve and worked at the colliery until he retired.
Mark's next song was Cousin Jack (Steve Knightley) - I always try to mention every song sung by a brand new dragon.
Richard gave us his own song Full of superstitions (*# Richard Gillion) and Lesley sang Kathy's song (* Paul Simon).
Mark introduced us to a comedy song from the pen of Jez Lowe: Talk to me dirty in geordie. This started a mini-theme of songs inspired by the singing of that song. First Richard sang The bonny Gateshead lass (* Joe Wilson) then Simon sang The Lambton worm (roud 2337 - Clarence M. Leumane).
Leslie told us of a common hazard for tourists with Max Boyce's The seagulls of Llandudno (*). Staying in Wales and noting that the title applied to Lesley, Richard sang Merch Megan (*). The English translation of the title is "Megan's daughter", and Richard sang it partly in Welsh and partly in his own translation.
Roger finished off the session with Tom Springfield's Island of dreams (*).
Now listen to a selection of songs sung during this session.
(Number of people present - 6 of whom 6 performed)
In the above report songs new to the Dragon database (though no always new to the club) are marked with an asterisk (*) and any songs not included in the "a selection" playlist are marked with a hash (#).
