Last updated: 29 Dec 2007
| December 2007 | 'Winter Festivals and Feasts' | Doug & Janny | 277 |
| November 2007 | 'Travel and Migration' | Ian | 276 |
| October 2007 | 'Working the land' | Ted & Sue | 275 |
| September 2007 | 'From the sublime to the ridiculous | Steve & Maureen | 274 |
| August 2007 | 'Favourites' | Sue | 273 |
| July 2007 | 'Imagination' | Peter M | 272 |
| June 2007 | 'As you like it' | Des | 271 |
| May 2007 | 'Books' | Doug & Janny | 270 |
| April 2007 | Themeless | Ian | 269 |
| March 2007 | 'Wales' | Pete B | 268 |
| February 2007 | 'Hearts and Royals' | Steve & Maureen | 267 |
| January 2007 | Old Time Music Hall | Sue | 266 |
The theme for Harbury Folk Club number 277 was “Winter Festivals and Feasts”, and we were truly treated to a feast of music, song and food. The selections from the performers ranged from traditional carols and songs, celebrations of winter, and as always individual interpretations of the theme.
In the first half there were fine contributions from: Janny & Maureen, Stuart, Peter McD, Ron, Mick, and Pete Bones. They weaved their way through the theme with: Dutch St Nicholas celebration, first Christmas away from home, making choices in the world, singing to the morning, apprentice’s Christmas party, Fiddlers’ Ball, Salvation Army, Les Barker’s Santa story. The final act of the first half saw the audience severely depleted as the Harbury Folk Club Choir took to the “stage”, and gave us rousing renditions of the Boar’s Head and Pentonville.
During the first break, there was the compulsory purchase of optional raffle tickets for the selected charity: Steph and Geoff’s Leamington Christian Mission. Sue Crum had made mince pies and these went down a treat, whilst Janny added to the charity collection by selling some Dutch seasonal treats which she had baked.
The second half kept up the fine standard with contributions from: Ted & Sue, Pete Mason, Pete Grassby, Summer & Jim, Barbara, and Ian & Sue. They mastered the theme with: Holy and Ivy, story about a naughty boy, office party, winter howling in, ploughing, time, spirit of solstice, hunting the Wren, musical medley of Christmas carols, winter drawers on, to drive the cold winter away. Summer had baked a wonderful “sun” shortbread, which was readily consumed by the audience, and got the prize for the prop of the evening which was a rustic bird cage on a decorative branch complete with a Wren in the cage. The second half was bought to a close by that seasonal offering: The BBQ Hornpipe from the Band of Folk.
Debbie was in fine form as she opened the third half with Gabriel’s Message. We then asked Mick, a welcome newcomer to the club, and Ted & Sue to give us one more song each. The formal part of the evening then came to a close, but it was followed by a great session of Christmas tunes by musicians on melodeons, concertinas, guitars, whistles, bones, and probably some other instruments I failed to notice. The evening raised £70 for the Leamington Christian Mission. Next month Debbie & Des host the evening on Thursday January 3rd, and their theme is Names.
Doug & Janny
The theme of the folk club for November was “Songs of Travel and Migration”, and a full room of audience and performers stuck enthusiastically to the theme all night.
The Harvesters started the night off with “The Southern Cross”, a song about transportation to Australia. Next up were Summer and her daughter Jenny who sang the plaintive “Green Fields of Canada” and then exhorted us to raise the dead of wintertime. Pete and Liz were next to the floor and their song of emigration “The Wild Geese” is an old favourite of the club’s. They then instructed us in the useful skill of “Messing About On The River”, a song that deserves more folk club outings. Dan and Susie, Danansooz, took us further afield to the Banks of the Nile and then brought us back to England and a miners’ song. Peter Mac, looking much recovered, sang “Albion Heart” and then a favourite Dougie MacLean song about a group of Scottish emigrants journeying first to Newfoundland and thence to Waipu in New Zealand. The first half was brought to a close by the rarely seen Double Up, singing a lovely song by John Warner from Australia: “Anderson’s Coast”.
After a brief refuelling interval at the bar, the second half kicked off with a quick instrumental from Sue on her banjo, “Cumberland Gap”. Rick sang about when a man’s in love and then sang a song about chasing the buffalo. He must be fitter than we thought! A welcome appearance from Dave Fry brought us “The City of New Orleans” and “Sail Away”, which had us all singing. Janny and Maureen were on great form too, and sang about a Big Green Credit Machine, and were then joined by Sue and Ian on the Carter Family’s “I’ll Fly Away”. Stuart sang about the reason and followed that with a song “The Wild Geese Are Flying”, which suggested a fowl theme was starting to develop. Peter Mason followed with a Ralph McTell song, “The Setting” and added “Isle of Hope, Isle of Tears”, a song about Ellis Island in New York. Will and Dan finished the half in rousing style on harmonica and guitar, playing some nifty tunes and demonstrating a virtuosity beyond their years.
The third half was by necessity a short one as the night was moving on apace. Des berated those who sell bad beer to sailors and then sang the classic song “The Band Played Waltzing Matilda”. Ron never disappoints with his choice of material and he had us “Bound Down to Newfoundland” before coming a little closer to home with “The Cruise of The Calabah”. The night was brought to a resounding end by Keith Donnelly with a couple of nicely crafted self-penned songs interspersed with some hilarious anecdotes.
The now obligatory folk club raffle raised £32.00 for Myton Hospice, and the next club with be on Thursday 6th December when Doug and Janny will host with the theme of “Winter Festivals and Feasts.” As ever, admission is free to a show that anywhere else audiences would pay good money to see.
Ian Hartland
The theme this month was “Working the Land”, and our singers produced a cornucopia of farming-based items and the usual crop of imaginative interpretations on the theme.
Those expecting to see Pete and Liz Bones were appalled to find Ted and Sue Crum had been parachuted in at short notice to cover family illness, but were indulgent enough to allow us to officiate.
Ted began the evening began with “The Farmers Toast” on voice and melodeon, ably assisted at random intervals by the restaurant coffee maker.
Pete Mason then transported us on wings of song to Canada with an account of the hardships of Canuck farming, followed by a Steve Knightley song on the theme Man of the land becomes Man of war.
Debbie sang the old Yiddish number Donna Donna, and the club’s harmony chorus turbo began to kick in. Deb’s subsequent poem earned her The Gasp of Collective Disbelief Award when she asserted that the sculpture she spoke of was originally a rock which had to be worked after being dug out of the land!
Janny and Maureen then gave us “Searching for Lambs” with what they described as a frog chorus caused by both having colds (or flu as we men like to call it). Sounded fine to us and their follow-up “Sorry the day I was married” was as always precise and charming.
Summer expressed surprise at not being insulted as she was announced, and was duly obliged by yours truly. Just back from her native Canada, she sang “Copsholme Fair” using her dulcimer for accompaniment, and then swapped to guitar for “Autumn brings the Shearing”.
The Band of Folk finished the first half with Pete McDonald’s tune “The Windmill” and “Speed the Plough”. What a great delight to see the man himself back in circulation, albeit only on light duties for the time being.
Round two started with Sue Crum’s version of “The Shearing’s Not For You” which further encouraged the Harbury Chorus Engine to put its communal foot down to great effect.
Stuart Headley gave us “The Praties grow Small” highlighting the Irish potato famine of the 1840s, followed by “Sunny” highlighting his senior moment in forgetting what the hell he’d planned to do second!
Des Patalong showed us a little bit of Kent with “Hopping”, and followed up with “John Barleycorn” He remarked (and we agreed) that the club was in fine voice, and he certainly gave us all chance to shake the dead flies off the rafters.
Pete Grassby produced a tour-de-force with his accapella interpretation of Harry Chapin’s song “Mail-order Annie”, a song of love from a lonely Prairies farmer to his new bride. He then sang about a threshing machine and played “Bonnets of Blue” on melodeon.
Ron Shuttleworth sang a Kipling piece called The Land, then blatantly and unashamedly confessed to ignoring the theme and the precepts of good grammar for his second which was called “I wish I was a poet”
Ian and Sue Hartland brought the second spasm to an appropriate end with “Dance at the Harvest Moon”, followed by Sue’s impressive debut on banjo frailing to “Cripple Creek”
The third half began with your scribe singing “Weyhill Fair”, following which Brian Rogers burst upon us with “Empty Echoes in the Stall” and “Farmer’s Boy” from the singing of Fred Jordan.
Pete Mason kindly returned to deliver a beautifully measured version of the Australian song “Now I’m Easy” which delighted our by now insatiable desire for choruses.
Pete Grassby played a haunting and delicate schottische called “The Nut Tree”, and Ian and Sue played “Dancing with Nancy” which as I recall involved Ian step-dancing whilst playing fiddle: highly original and somewhat dangerous for the right ear of anybody standing on his left.
The evening was brought to a rousing crescendo by Des opening the throttles and giving us “Glorious Ale”. The Harbury Chorus Engine hit the afterburners and we finished hoarse but happy. .
Thanks to a combination of gentle persuasion from Sue Crum and threats of physical violence by Pete Grassby and your correspondent, the raffle raised a magnificent £62 which as we speak is stuck in a post-box somewhere on its way to the Motor Neurone Association. On a personal note it was a pleasure and a privilege to be asked to run the night for the first time, and Sue and I enjoyed it immensely.
Ted & Sue
The theme for the evening was “Sublime to the ridiculous” – and so it was to be!
Maureen was without her usual singing partner Janny and so had to start the evening off all on her own – despite some obvious nerves she told Steve to listen carefully to the words to the song “Silly old fool” and got through the number with some relief.
Stuart was in fine form and sang a song that was very personal as well as emotional about “The child that never came” – it was a first attempt to write a song by a man called Anton – some very powerful words for his first attempt. He followed this with a dainty version of “Wild Rover”. Ron gave us the sublime to the gorblimey and we all learnt about “High” or “Childe’s” ballads followed by a sick song about eating snakes in the woods. Rik told us of a sublime moment about 10 years ago when he was on his bike at sunrise looking at fallow Deer – so he sang “Oh what a beautiful morning” followed by the completely ridiculous potty training song “Oui, oui, oui” and then Martin sang a Jez Lowe number “Last of the widows”, a very sad song about the Easington mining disaster following which there were left 80 widows. The passing away of the last widow was what prompted Jez to put pen to paper. Martin then followed this by the ridiculous “Old bazaar of Cairo”. Ian and Sue closed the first half with an epic adventure about a group of apprentices searching for the fabled canal but who ended up abandoning the venture in Stoke on Trent and followed it with a sublime arrangement of “Who’s a fool now”.
Pete Mason opened the second half and reminded us of his skill of taking any sublime song and making it ridiculous – so he sang the “Alcoholics Anthem”. Chris Tobin proudly displayed his red guitar and gave a sublime rendition of the Ink Spots “I love coffee, I love tea” followed by the “Sad hypochondriac”. Pete Grassby ridiculously wanted us to believe he could keep it up with “Nine times a night” and then played a tune from Brass Monkey. Des had us sing a refrain about “Bold Sir John” and for some reason we noted down a reference to twits and bums but couldn’t remember the context! He followed with a love song called “Turn of the road”. Sue and Ted finished the second half and despite suffering from Whitbyitis, still managed “John o’dreams” and Ted then had us all smiling with a Flanders and Swann song about the Honeysuckle marrying the Bindweed.
At the break, Sue didn’t win the raffle – but during the third half we heard again from Stuart about the kids returning to school, Pete Grassby was attacked by a moth, Chris sang the “Blue ridge mountains of Virginia”, Ted played a ridiculous medley from way back, Sue sang beautifully the traditional “Bushes and Briars” and the evening finished with yet another rousing chorus from Des – we all joined in and went away uplifted by it!
The raffle raised a fantastic £43.51 for TOFS, a charity which supports children born without an oesophagus – have you ever tried to feed a baby with no oesophagus?
October’s gathering will be led by Pete and Liz Bones and the theme is “Working the Land”
Steve & Maureen
I thought that the 273rd Folk Club might be a quiet one as the holiday and Folk Festival season is upon us but we can compete with all that! Our theme was ‘ Favourites’ and we had some new and old favourite performers singing and playing some new and old favourite songs.
The Harvesters opened the evening with ‘A Cut Above’ and ‘The Southern Cross’. Des followed with 2 songs we could all join in with. Rick sang the beautiful song ‘Skylark’ and then amazed us all by performing the Les Barker poem ‘ Shih-Tzu ‘ better than the man himself! Summer then gave us 2 of her favourites and then Ted and Sue closed the first half with ‘Sovay’ and 3 of Ted’s tunes named after his favourite people, ‘Susie’s Stomp’, ‘Matthew’s March’ and ‘ JoJo’s Jig’
The second half opened with Peter Mason performing ‘Idle Time’ and the ever popular ‘The Band played Waltzing Matilda’. Janny & Maureen sang 2 of my favourites ‘Two Brothers’ and ‘Cupid’s Garden’. Pete & Liz sang ‘The Fox’ and then played some tunes with Ted. Ron gave us ‘The Jolly Apprentice’ and then a taste of the Foreign Legion! We were then treated to some sublime singing from Ruth, who is everyone’s favourite. She sang “Feels like Home’ and ‘ A Taste of Honey’ both accompanied by Ian.
We had time in the third half for the performers who were still around to do another one. I particularly liked Pete & Liz singing ‘ The Trees they do Grow High’ and also I love Ted’s hilarious performance of “She loved a Portuguese’. To finish the evening I invited everyone to join in singing 'Will ye go Lassie Go?’
The raffle made £32 for Macmillan Nurses. We will do it all again next month when the theme is ‘ From the sublime to the ridiculous’
See you then
Sue Hartland
At the July Folk Club we had to imagine that the microphone wasn’t there. ‘Imagination’ was the theme but the microphone was there because Keith Wedgebury from BBC C&W Radio had come along to record the session. So, in various states of nervousness or professionalism, twenty performers provided the usual quality, varied entertainment. We were delighted to welcome Chris Tobin for the first time with three of his distinctive songs and Will Pound brought the house down with his dazzling harmonica skill.
The raffle raised £40 and 1 Euro(!) for OVACOME. www.ovacome.org.uk
The next folk club on August 2nd will be run by Sue and the theme is ‘Favourites’.
http://welcome.to/harburyfolkclub
Peter McDonald
The theme for this evening was chosen with great care and diligence the month before when I spotted ‘Old Will’ on the bar of the Shakespeare. I was inspired to not have a theme but to disguise it by having the theme “As You Like It”. I’d have been in trouble if I’d gone for “A Midsummer Night’s Dream”. Needless to say Harbury’s regulars relished the theme and came armed with songs they liked and hoped we would to.
While I did try to take down as many of the songs sung as I could, my notes have got in a terrible tangle. I’ll content myself with noting the artists who performed and what to me were the highlights (mine are platinum and though I never ask the hairdresser to put them in I always find more of them after I’ve been).
In the first of three sections, we saw the varied talents of myself and the Harvesters, Rick and Pete Stanton (because of the number of Peters and Petes at this club you have to differentiate). We also had Summer and at this point we discovered that Peter McDonald, Summer and I share the same birthday though in different years. If you get this report before your birthday, Peter, have a good one. Now normally we try to get six acts into a section (or that’s the way it seems) and I discovered that, in my inefficiency, I’d missed one when Pete Grassby walked in. With barely a moment to sip a drink, he found himself thrust into the spotlight. I then introduced the charity for the evening and finished the first bit with “Shallow Brown”.
The charity had occurred to me earlier in the year when the country was celebrating the bi-centennial of the abolition of slavery which got me thinking that really this was false. Slavery exists in many forms throughout the world and even in this country with people bonded to gang masters or trafficked into the sex trade. More conventional forms of slavery exist elsewhere including child labour. It is difficult to make the economic connections but, as I pointed out, a lot of trade is still built on slavery and collectively we probably benefit from cheap goods in the shop. My choice of charity was, therefore, Anti-Slavery International and there is a link at the bottom of this report to their website.
Debbie had kindly agreed to be my partner for the night. The audience had divided into bride’s and groom’s sides at the beginning of the evening with far more for the bride which is as it should be, but filled out shortly after for the groom. She did sterling work while I went around the second section artists and sorted them out.
The second spasm began with Ron who always gives good value and reminded us of the tale of the Jaberwocky and gave us his rendition of “Will (Won’t) you go Lassie go”. He was followed by Debbie accompanied by Ian and gave us the female version of “House of the Rising Son”. Peter McDonald followed and, as it is he that is running July, told us that the theme was “Imagination”. He doesn’t want anyone doing John Lennon’s classic as he intends to so he’s getting there first. See if I care! He was followed by Stuart and then a highlight of the evening with the debut appearance at Harbury of a new three-part harmony combo Penny Royal. Two of these had been seen before as Dixon and Dickson (that might have been the other way around) but they are now joined by Fiona. I had the pleasure of hearing them elsewhere before this evening and just knew they would wow Harbury. They even got Keith Donnelly shouting for more and it gave me great pleasure to offer them a reprise in the third spasm. The second spasm was closed by Ted Crum in excellent style.
I’d asked Pete and Liz Bones to open the third spasm. Liz had enquired if I thought they’d still be awake after a few drinks but as usual they gave excellent entertainment. I particularly like “Rosebud In June” with which they closed their set and I think because it gives everyone a really good chorus to get their teeth into. They were followed by Pete Mason (you see what I mean by Pete and Peter). We then saw Penny Royal giving another two excellent offerings before a somewhat quieter Keith Donnelly closed the evening for us. Now Keith had entered into the spirit of the theme by writing a song based on a loose interpretation of the works of Shakespeare entitled, if I got this right, “As You Like It”.
And that was that. I should point out that the raffle raised £33 and that I won one of the prizes but then redrew the raffle. If I’d won again I’d have called it fate and gone off with the two bottles of real ale but in the event didn’t. Here’s the website:
Des Patalong
The theme for Harbury Folk Club number 270 was “Books”. This was selected to support the charity for the evening, a project by a few UK universities “to recycle surplus educational resources from UK secondary schools to Tanzania”.
The first set of artists had been booked: Janny & Maureen with Peter & Margaret, Pete Mason, Martin, Stuart, Rik, Ian & Sue, Ted & Sue. Their selections included songs by Ralph McTell, Les Barker, Jez Lowe, plus self penned contributions. The subjects covered topics like: days in the week, old bones, Shakespeare, coal, drinking and senior moments. The Booker Prize of the first half went to Ted for the number of times he managed to mention the theme with Old Johnny Booker.
We had wanted to fit all the artists in the first two halves, but this was just impossible without forgoing beer and comfort breaks. We did manage to showcase: Danansooz, Peter McD, Liz & Margaret, Debbie, Ron, Summer, and Keith. They included songs by Dougie MacLean, Gordon Lightfoot, Jez Lowe, plus more self penned contributions. The Orange Prize of the second half was awarded for the premiere of those duelling fiddlers Liz & Margaret playing The False Trail Waltz.
As always we saved the best for the third half. Des was in stunning vocal form as always, Pete Stanton played that Jake Thackeray and Mike Putnam hit Brother Gorilla. Janny & Maureen embarrassed a couple of members of Hereburgh with some old poems about them. The Whitbread Prize of the third half was awarded to Danansooz for their wonderful rendition of Song for Ireland. Sorry Dan there is not a Carling or Budweiser book award.
Another fine evening in the Shakespeare, and don’t miss the next club on the 7th June when Des will be the host with the theme As You Like It. The raffle raised £43 which has been donated to Kathy Freeman’s fund raising for the distribution of the books in Tanzania that have been collected from schools in the Liverpool area.
Doug & Janny
For the 269th Folk Club in April, the night was kept theme-free. Whilst some performers found this gave them a vast choice of material, others voiced the opinion that a theme normally helped focus the mind a little more. Either way, no theme and no obvious planning did mean that nothing could go wrong. Interestingly, some of the performers seemed to want to carry on the previous month’s theme of “Wales / whales / wails”. Presumably their songs had not been ready for the March club?
The Harvesters opened the night with the cliché-ridden “Tell It Like It Is”, followed by “Hearts And Flowers”. Summer had asked to go one as soon as possible as she had a lot of words to remember. Her zither and voice did justice to “The Clear Dales Air” and she followed this with a Tom Lewis song, “The Tale Of A Whale”. Janny and Maureen followed with “April Morn”, perfectly judged for the time of year. Peter McDonald had “Another Train” to catch, before bidding us “Farewell To The Gold”, two popular and well-performed songs. Pete and Liz then told of lambs on green hills and a Cuckoo, to herald spring and perhaps net them a job with Bill Oddie? Ron brought the first half to a stirring conclusion with his song written for the Morris Ring and then the patriotic “St George”. He was even more popular when he offered the audience free cassettes of his own songs, recorded in the early 1990’s.
The second half opened with most of the room’s seats empty as the Band Of Folk all came to the front to play together two medleys, the first in waltz time and the second a couple of Morris jig tunes. Some of Hereburgh Morris will have danced jigs at the West Coast Ale in California by the time you read this. Up next was Rik, who had also planned to sing “Farewell To The Gold”, but instead contented himself with “Little Jimmy Brown” and “The Loving Of The Game”. Peter Mason was in a more reflective mood this month with a song about the Troubles in Northern Ireland, followed by a song about emigration. Jane was next, singing powerfully and unaccompanied “The Loveliest Of Trees” and “My Bitter-Sweet Bed”, a song by Chris While. It is always good to see a performer marking their Harbury debut in style and Pete Stanner created quite an impact with his confident and charming presentation. He started with a song about sausages and then followed with a Jake Thackeray classic: “The Lodger”. Great stuff. Des completed the second half with the popular shanty “Shallow Brown” and the powerful “Band Played Waltzing Matilda”.
After a brief refuelling break at the bar, the third half got under way with Debbie Ellis’ brother Darren making his debut. Although he apologised for not being a “folk” singer, his choice of “Leaving On A Jet Plane” and Neil Young’s “Heart of Gold” were obviously ideal choices for the Harbury audience, who sang along enthusiastically. Pete Grassby, having driven from Ripponden to Harbury that very evening, arrived in time to perform (aptly, perhaps?) “Ten Thousand Miles” and then his own popular Whale Song. Finally The Harvesters closed the singing part of the evening with “The Parting Of The Ways”. The musicians carried on for twenty minutes or so afterwards in an informal tunes session, an opportunity that had not been available for some months previously due to the sheer number of performers.
Once again, a memorable night was had with a wide range of songs, styles and artists. The raffle raised an impressive £35.00 for Myton Hospice. The next Folk Club is on Thursday 3rd May, when Doug and Janny will be offering performers the theme of “Books”.
Ian Hartland
With the March meeting of the Folk Club falling on St David's Day, I had no problem in selecting a theme for the evening. It was of course “Wales”.
We were treated to a variety of items performed to a full house. These ranged from a story about a not-so-friendly Welsh dragon presented by Keith Donnelly, to songs about hunting Whales. However one of the highlights of the evening was the beautiful self-accompanied singing of Linda Watkins in her native Welsh Language.
I know I am biased, but another of the highlights of the evening was the unaccompanied harmony singing of Liz Bones and Nicola Lomas. They used to form half of the group Bonas, but have not performed together for a number of years. It was great to hear them again.
Once again we had a good number of talented musicians willing to perform and it was not easy trying to fit all 17 items into the evening. However I think it was worth the effort as the warm and responsive audience seemed to appreciate the variety and standard of the items performed. Many thanks to all who took part and also members of the audience who provided such a good atmosphere
Thanks also to those who contributed to the raffle which raised £45.00 for Comic Relief.
Pete Bones
The theme for the month was in keeping with February being the month of the Queen’s accession to the throne and Valentine’s Day. The room filled to the brim with artists and performers continuing to arrive during the first half resulting in Steve and Maureen wondering how we would get everyone fitted in to the three halves. It ended up being a long evening and a late finish - our thanks to all who stayed until the end!
Maureen and Janny started the evening with ‘Hedger and Ditcher’ followed by ‘Sorry’ and then Stuart told the tale of how his mother-in-law told him he should say sorry to his wife which led us into ‘Wooden Heart’ and ‘Yellow is the Colour’. Liz and Pete took Steve back to Ballyshannon with shades of Altan by singing ‘Green Grow the Rushes ‘O’ and then’ Fill my Heart with Flowers’. Rik was in a sombre mood and sang the sad tales of an arranged marriage, a death at the age of 16 and a Princes affair of the heart in a seedy hotel. Peter McDonald sang ‘Albion Heart’ and was then joined by Margaret – after two false starts we then heard ‘The Lovers Heart’. Keith Adams performed an Irish Chieftains pre-battle warning tune followed by Kings Heart, as a result Steve was transported this time to the Connemara hills! The first half closed with Band of Folk playing ‘Princess Royal’ and ‘Valentine’
The second half began with Maureen and Janny singing Cupids Garden and then Celia treated us to a Scottish sword dance with its origins based upon the time when Macbeth killed Duncan and celebrated by dancing over a sword. Des sang an early 1800’s song ‘A Little Tale’ and then got everyone going with Babylon is Fallen – a reference to Charles1st losing his head. Ted and Sue Crumb sang a love song about boy meets girl, girl reject’s boy and girl then changes mind! Ted then played us Blues and Royals. Summer saddened us all with the tragedy of the death of two lovers. The big Ken from Bangor made his debut by persuading Sue Hartland to accompany him with ‘Will Ye Go Lassie’ – Ken wasn’t sure if he was tenor or bass which made it difficult for Sue to harmonise. Ian and Sue kept to the theme by singing about love and ‘Princes in the Tower’ and then Ron followed with Joan the Leather Queen – we’re sure many of us could hear someone else’s voice accompanying him!! The second half finished with Keith Donnelly singing his favourite song which he had never done live before ‘Princess Star’ and then introduced us to a brand new song (only two weeks old) ‘Rocket Shoes’.
It was getting late and there were still a number of performers to go so Martin got the half underway with a Jake Thackeray song followed by a song about the Kings and Queens of England. Peter Mason sang a Tom Paxton number and then Linda Watkins who had travelled from Buckingham but was really a lovely girl from the ‘Valleys’, sang ‘Only a Woman and then a Welsh song about a ‘Darling Wife’. The evening closed with a rousing chorus from Des which we were all able to join in with.
An absolutely packed evening was enjoyed by all. The raffle raised £73 which was donated to the Alzheimer’s Society fund raising cycling trip down the Nile being completed during February by Doug Freeman and Dave Shuttleworth.
During next month is St David’s Day so the theme is ‘Wales’, ‘Whales’ or is it ‘Wails’
Steve & Maureen Darby
The 266th Harbury Folk Club became an Old Time Music Hall where many of the Artistes and audience dressed up for the occasion.
The Harvesters opened the evening with ‘Oh Mr Porter’ and ‘It’s a Great Big Shame’, two very popular and well known songs which the audience participated in. Maureen (with her attractive assistant, Steve) sang two Bernard Cribbins’ songs, ‘Hole in the Ground’ and ‘Right Said Fred’. Rik gave us ‘If it wasn’t for the Houses in between’ and ‘Hang on the Bell Nelly’. Other fine contributions came from Peter Mason, The Dorset Farmer and 4Play who managed to play each others' melodeons whilst still playing their own, not something I would recommend, but they made a very good job of it!
The second half started with The Concertina Orchestra who attempted to play two Old Time Music Hall classics; the audience were on top form and joined in the choruses. Ron made an excellent choice of songs with ‘The Queen of the Burlesque’ and ‘It’s the same the Whole World Over’. Celia gave us a fine recitation about a girl called Harriet and Des had us all singing with ‘Down Below’ and ‘Ilkley Moor’. Peter McDonald closed with a tongue twister ‘The Coffee Pot Song’ followed by ‘Martha the Watercress Girl’.
The Harvesters commenced the third half with ‘Waiting at the Church’; Ted followed with a fine rendition of ‘The Battle of Hastings’ and ‘A little bit of Cucumber’. Ron gave us ‘Polly Perkins” and the evening was brought to a grand finale with the hilarious Keith Donnelly being Keith Donnelly!
The raffle made £50 for Doug Freeman’s and Dave Shuttleworth’s forthcoming bike ride ‘up the Nile’ to raise money for Alzheimer’s. A big thank you to the performers and audience who entered into the spirit of the evening and made it a success.
Sue Hartland