Bonfire Night 2025

Last week's slightly belated bonfire night session at the Dragon Folk Club saw the usual mix of Guy Fawkes, bonfires, and campfire songs as well as general winter themes and some serendipitous performances mixed in. more importantly it brought an impressive turn-out of singers including three first timers: Ander, Rebecca and Johan who all sang excellently.

First, and importantly, there will be no Dragon Folk Club session this Friday (14th November 2025) so we will delay our Remembrance themed evening (war, anti-war, remembrance, etc.) until the following Friday (21st November). In the meantime some of use may visit Folk at Frampton Cotterell this Friday.

Colin, MC as usual, set us a rhythm by starting the evening with Running bear (Jiles Perry Richardson "The Big Bopper"). Roger said it was the first record he bought.

Roger invited us to Keep right on to the end of the road (roud 23917 - Harry Lauder). Perhaps this was an early Remembrance contribution since Lauder wrote the song in honour of his son, killed in the First World War.

Heather gave us Wild mountain thyme (roud 541 - Francis McPeake).

Paul invoked his inner child with Michael Finnegan (roud 10541) and Denny made some of those assembled squirm with Nobody likes me (roud 12764).

Simon sang The ballad of Patch Eye and Meg (Michelle Shocked), relevant because it was first recorded as part of The Texas Campfire Tapes.

Sue sang of The leaving of Liverpool (roud 9435) and Bob brought the first rotation to an end with My girl Josephine (Fats Domino, Dave Bartholomew).

For now our visitors, appropriately to Bonfire Night, kept their powder dry, but that wasn't to last long.

Rebecca's songs were:

• The little beggarman (roud 900)
• Poor Guy (* Peter Christie) from the singing of Instant Sunshine
• Woad (roud 24978 - William Hope-Jones)

Ander sang:

• I wish I was back in Liverpool (Leon Rosselson, Stan Kelly-Bootle)

We also heard a duet from Rebecca and Ander on Queen of Waters (Nancy Kerr).

Johan gave us a traditional Swedish drinking song about Noah leaving his ark and growing vines to make wine: Gubben Noak (* Carl Michael Bellman). The tune reminded Denny of Come landlord fill the flowing bowl (roud 1234), and so she sang it.

There were just two songs which are not on YouTube and therefore not in the playlist linked from "a selection" below:

• Roger - Together we'll fight (*# Roger Stanleigh)
• Colin - I love to go a-gorging (#)

The remaining songs new to the Dragon database, but not necessarily never before sung at the club, were:

• Roger - Don't ever change (* Gerry Goffin, Carole King) - Rejected by The Everly Brothers, recorded by The Crickets and performed by The Beatles
• Heather - A winter's tale (* Mike Batt, Tim Rice)
• Colin - My leader (*)

It fell to Paul to finish the evening which he did with Cockles and mussels (roud 16932).

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

(Number of people present - 12 of whom 11 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 (#).

Valentine's Day 2022

Last Friday it was good to see Mike back in fine voice following a dog-related incident which had kept him away. The said dog (Indy) was also present and had obviously been practising his scales. We had met to sing songs of love and lust for Valentine's Day (slightly prematurely) and that is pretty much what we did.

Colin, MCing as usual, started us off with Ralph McTell's The girl from the hiring fair. Simon followed with Scarborough Fair (roud 12, child 2) and Mike completed the first rotation with Come write me down (roud 381).

The only exception I have spotted to the love and lust theme was Mike's parting song, All the good times (Bob Pegg).

There were some doubles, the first one I noticed was Simon unusually singing two songs from Dolly Parton: Love is like a butterfly and Jolene.

Some humour came from Colin singing The Kipper Family's version of Soldier, soldier (roud 489), entitled The Disabled Seaman. This was also the only song from the evening for which I have been unable to find a YouTube recording.

Simon sang some songs more often sung by Colin: Running Bear (Jiles Perry Richardson "The Big Bopper") and Me and Bobby McGee (Kris Kristofferson, Fred Foster). In return Colin sang She Moves Through The Fair (roud 861) which Simon sometimes sings.

Colin took on quite a task of singing John Jacob Niles' song Venezuela, while Simon's biggest challenge may have been the guitar accompaniment for Margarita (Harvey Andrews).

Colin closed the evening with the second part of another double, this time from Donovan. He had earlier sung To sing for you, and now finished is off with Josie.

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

(Number of people present - 3 of whom 3 performed)

Keeping the music alive

Poster for the Winter Dance Party tour
featuring the ill-fated Buddy Holly,
Ritchie Valens and The Big Bopper

Last week's session was billed as having the dual theme of rugby, for the start of the 2018 Six Nations Championship, and the anniversary of the death of Buddy Holly. Well, we didn't get much rugby but we did make a fair stab in before the break at "The Day The Music Died", hence the title of this report. And yes, the report doesn't mention much "real" folk music this week but I hope you find it interesting and there's still plenty of the "real drop" if you follow the "a selection" link at the bottom of this account.

Colin was MC and he started off the session with Sting's Fields Of Gold. much later in the evening, Simon suggested pairing that with his Sailing To Philadelphia (Mark Knopfler), both songs being written by rock musicians from the North East of England. Derek recalled a local singer when he was based in the North East himself who often sang the songs of Graeme Miles, a Middlesbrough man. One of the songs he sang was Fields Of Gold and with Derek's knowledge of modern popular music being limited, he assumed for a long time the song had been written by Miles. Colin too was surprised to learn that it was by Sting since he associated it with Eva Cassidy's enchanting version.