Welcome new faces

(Photo: Simon Meeds)

It was a great turn-out at the Dragon Folk Club last week. Apart from some regulars, Paul and Denny brought non-singing friend Jill (don't believe it, I saw her singing along to the choruses). Also long time follower on Facebook, George, made her debut and brought her friend John who was visiting her from the far reaches of East Anglia. And let's not forget that George brought her very well behaved dog, Juniper. Let's hope we see and hear a lot more of George in the future - John's great too, but he's got a long way to come.

Next week's session will have a theme for Valentine's Day so songs of love and lust will be of interest though as always with themes at the Dragon Folk Club, it is totally optional and just for fun.

Simon was standing in for Colin as MC and Paul started the ball rolling with Grey funnel line (Cyril Tawney). Denny's first song was The shores of old Blighty (Graeme Miles).

George's first song for the Dragon was Glen Isla near bonny Glenshee (roud 832) and John's opener was his own Grandad (* John Hare).

Simon started with The world turned upside down (Leon Rosselson). We hadn't seen Rob at The Bridge for a while and he marked his return with MacPherson's rant (roud 2160).

Bob and Sue brought the first rotation to a close with Bear Creek blues (roud 17345 - AP Carter) and Hallelujah (Leonard Cohen) respectively.

As is customary, I will mention all songs sung by newcomers, in this case George and John:

• George - The ballad of old Seth Davy (Glyn Hughes)
• John - Rolling to Cairo town (* Dillon Bustin)
• George - As I roved out (* roud 3479), not to be confused with As I roved out (roud 277, laws O17)
• John - Little Brigid Flynn (* roud 39674 - William Percy French)
• George - Peggy Gordon (roud 2280)
• John - Clancy of the overflow (* Banjo Paterson - to a tune by John Hare himself)

Other songs new to the Dragon database were:

• Rob - The ballad of Lucy Jordan (* Shel Silverstein)
• Rob - The factory girl (* roud 1659), not to be confused with The factory girl (roud V4694) or others of the same name
• Bob - The year that Clayton Delaney died (* Tom T Hall)

The session was closed with Denny singing Byker Hill (roud 3488).

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

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

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 (#).

Barely there but not down the plughole

(Photo: Simon Meeds)

Despite the return of Simon from his hols, last week's session was once again barely quorate but many songs were sung - 31 in fact - before a slightly early finish as Colin ran out of songs he had prepared.

It was indeed Colin who set the ball rolling with Rigs Of The Time (Roud 876) which Derek followed with Bonny At Morn (Roud 3064). Simon's first was Mary McCloud's parody, House Of The Rising Damp and Mike gave us What's The Life Of A Man (Roud 848).

Derek suggested that Colin may have picked Leonard Cohen's most cheerful song in Hallelujah. I don't know about that but I thought you might like an analysis of the song's meaning and history.

Give me that old time religion

(Photo: Simon Meeds)

It'll be a concise report of last week's session but I hope it will still give you a flavour of what happened.

There was a tongue in cheek note at the end of the previous week's blog report that there might be a theme of carrier bags. Colin started us off with his one plastic bag song: Benledi Street Ballad. Apparently Coin found three other songs about bags but hadn't been able to prepare them for performance.

I don't think Derek's Lake of Coolfin (Roud 189, Laws Q33) had anything to do with bags of any kind and neither did Geoff's first: Master McGrath (James Custer, Roud V32683).