St David's Day 2024

(AI image from Stable Diffusion)

Last week's Dragon Folk Club session actually fell on St David's Day, so no excuse was required to try to sing things related somehow, sometimes tenuously, to Wales... or even sometimes to whales (oh well). We were fine with four singers, but unusually we also had an audience member in the person of Denny's sister, who was a very welcome addition. I hope she enjoyed her evening; at least she laughed in all the right places.

This Friday's session (8th March) will have no theme, but then next week (15th March) we will be celebrating St Patrick's Day just two days early. I'll leave detailed suggestions of what you might like to do until next week's report.

We had a bumper set of 40 performances last Friday, and I should say that if any of them appear derogatory to Wales or the Welsh, no offence is intended. These are songs and poems from all sorts of different sources and of varying ages. Please enjoy all the recordings linked from "a selection" below in the spirit of entertainment.

There were just three performances for which no representative YouTube video could be found:

• Colin - Children born to the valleys (Dawson Smith)
• Simon - The ice cream bells of Porthcawl (Les Barker)
• Colin - From green to black (Dawson Smith)

It was in fact Denny who kicked off proceedings with a song variously called "Always eat when you are hungry" or "Don't forget to breathe or else you'll die. The song features sung by Gracie Fields at the end of the film Molly and Me from 1945 and an earlier recording can be found at 2:05 in this Vitaphone short from 1928 called The Beau Brummels and featuring the vaudeville act Shaw and Lee. Denny however sang more words and to the tune Cwm Rhondda.

Simon took a leaf out of our friend Derek's book in order to follow the theme by trying and not always succeeding to sing songs from the repertoire of traditional Gower singer Phil Tanner. The Gower Wassail (roud 209) was partly successful, and Barbara Allen (roud 54, child 84) more so as was The oyster girl (roud 875, laws Q13), albeit not Tanner's version, but acquired from the singing of Rosie Upton (who is in the linked video). Although he had a couple more songs in this vein on file he cut his losses at this stage.

Colin's singing of The bells of Rymney (Idris Davies) gives me the chance to roll out a fun video made by our friend Gabe in which he visited each of the locations mentioned in the song/poem.

As people started to run out of Welsh songs (except for Colin who lasted out the night) we had a number of perfectly good if geographically random mining songs such as Paul with Close the coalhouse door (Alex Glasgow), and Denny with Down in your mine (Colin Wilkie).

Well' I've just about run out of time to write this report, so I'll just mention that Simon finished the evening with When all men sing (Keith Scowcroft, Derek Gifford).

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

(Number of people present - 5 of whom 4 performed)

St David's Day 2023

After a good run of well peopled sessions we were down to a core of two last week. With one of those due to be absent this Friday (10th March) it's really important that you make an effort to join us whether you are a regular, an occasional visitor or a first timer.

There will be no theme, we don't bite and anything goes as long as it's acoustic. So, whether you mostly sing, play, recite or just listen, you will be equally welcome to experience our free entry, warm welcome, great acoustics and the reasonably priced bar.

Join us this or (almost) any Friday from 8:15pm in the pool room of The Bridge Inn, Shortwood, Bristol (UK), BS16 9NG.

Once at the pub, if you need help to find us, be sure to mention "Dragon Folk Club" at the bar and you should be pointed in the right direction.

And now back to last week. With the theme of St David's Day there was some effort made to sing things Welsh or about Wales or the Welsh, and then as usual that was stretched a bit: to wales, New South Wales, and a few songs which missed the mark, but never mind.

MC Colin started us off with Welsh history 101B (Heather Rose Jones) which Simon followed with Fiddler's Dram's Day Trip to Bangor (Debbie Cook).

Simon read a poem by recently deceased, adopted Welshman, Les Barker. The poem in question was The Ice Cream Bells of Porthcawl. This required the reader to pronounce that well-known Welsh village name which also gave one of Colin's songs its title; that title being Llanfairpwllgwyngyll...gogogoch!, a parody of Supercalifragilisticexpialidocious, written by Kristof Robertson.

Most of the other songs not included in the "a selection" playlist linked below were sung by Colin from the pen of Dawson Smith. He sang three of these: Rebecca, Rebecca about the Rebecca Riots, Children Born to the Valleys, and From Green to Black.

Simon finished the evening with the Bristol-based Welsh Back Quay written by local shanty singer Ian "Nobby" Dye.

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

(Number of people present - 2 of whom 2 performed)