Tiny fish in a small pond

MV Rt. Hon. Paul J. Martin passing through Lock 7
of the Welland Canal between Lakes Ontario and Erie
(Photo: Simon Meeds)

The numbers at the end of this report are a bit misleading. On the one hand there were two singers who met for the Dragon Folk Club session last week. On the other, due to the gents toilets being out of action, there was a constant stream of people passing through. Most, but not all, were respectful. Some were complimentary. One performed. A drunken Irishman (apparently) was effusive in his praise. We were even joined briefly by our friend Allie who was very appreciative and gave a few brief snippets from her folk repertoire.

Things started off early as John, having visited the facilities borrowed Simon's guitar and played a few riffs including Wonderwall (Noel Gallagher) for which his unnamed friend joined in with vocals.

Once we got underway properly, Simon, the stand-in MC, started things off with Windmills (Alan Bell).

Remarkably, the two singers, that is disregarding John, who appeared again later with some more riffs, and Allie with her brief medley of songs, sang a total of 39 during the evening. It was almost 11pm by the time it all finished, but the main reason for stopping at 39 was that Steve said he'd run out of songs, and almost out of voice.

You can follow the link from "a selection" below to a playlist of all the songs we sang except one. That one came from Steve and was When Adam was first created (roud 728).

No new songs were added to the Dragon database this week, although it was the first recorded singing of Steve's version of roud 369, laws L5, that being Sam Hall rather than Jack Hall which was already there.

Steve sang a couple of other songs which hadn't previously been recorded in the database for him: Adieu sweet lovely Nancy (roud 165) and The leaving of Liverpool (roud 9435).

Of course we had a few Stan Rogers songs from Steve: White squall, Tiny fish for Japan, and The field behind the plow. I also see that Rogers recorded Cyril Tawney's Sammy's bar.

The evening was completed by Simon singing Jackson C Frank's Blues run the game.

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

(Number of people present - 4 of whom 3 performed)

Rambling Syd Rumpo rises again

Cyril Tawney

Mike kicked off the session this week with the Heights of Alma about the Battle of Alma which took place, reasonably topically, on 20 September 1854 and is usually considered to be the first battle of the Crimean War.

Last week Mervyn remembered a folk session with the theme "one song sung to the tune of another", and sang his version of Kathy's Song to the tune of The Silkie. He also related that Kitty Vernon had sung Wild rover to the tune of Away in a manger. This week we heard that Derek went home that night singing just that combination in the car. He said it went quite well, but he couldn't possibly repeat something that had been done before. Derek therefore charmed us with Hell's angel (the parody of Wild rover) to the tune of Lord of all hopefulness, which is in turn based on Banks of the Bann. When Paul showed an interest in knowing the difference between these two tunes, Derek dredged his memory and sang, from beyond his already huge repertoire, Banks of the Bann.