Marlow Bottom Acoustic Club

Despite the large turn-out on Tuesday night at The Old Ship, we had a quorum on Wednesday. Apart from the familiar stuff:

• Steve led 'The Times They Are a Changing'. Several people of a certain age seemed to know all the words.
• Vicky brought her guitar along, and gave us 'The Recruited Collier'.
• Rosie sprang 'Six Days on the Road' on Steve and Alan, which was unsurprisingly somewhat ragged. Their version of this song used to quite good and much appreciated. Some practice required!

We received a very warm welcome from the new Landlord and Landlady, Ron and .... and had a highly enjoyable evening in the lovely old pub.  The pub is doing splendid food with local produce wherever possible, including local rabbit, pheasant and partridge, but excellent veggie options available too, and they only sell real ale - no lager!  

A very big thankyou to all those who came to support the evening, Roger and Annie (Henley Fok Club), Tim Brooks, Roger Rowe, Stuart (fab guitarist from Marlow), Tony and Pearl (Maidenhead Folk Club), the man with the melodeon (sorry, not sure of name), and all the regulars from Marlow Bottom Acoustic Club.

We had just the right mix of tune and songs, the songs ranging from ballad to comedy, the latter from Roger and Dave.  And the clientelle at the pub all seemed to enjoy the music and were joining in as well.

We hope to vist the Old Ship again soon, possibly on Wednesday 21st November as there is football in our usual venue that night and it will be too noisy for us to meet there that night.  We are also looking at the possibility of having an evening of food, drink, song and tune as a Christmas treat, so anyone interested in joining us please get in touch asap as it will need to booked up fairly soon. Their Xmas menu is £19.50 for 3 excellent courses and I can email the menu to anyone interested.

Will post any dates on myspace and facebook.

We had a lovely relaxed fun evening with lots of singing, 4 songs each and lots of banter, some unrepeatable here! John appeared much earlier than normal because the Orpheus choir had their practice cancelled - they'd been to Scarborough, stayed in a hotel where there was a bug and 35 out of their 55 members went down with it!!! But it meant we had John for a whole evening which was nice.

Both Vicky and Karen did guitar practice and no one complained too much. Vicky did Recruited Collier fo the first time and Rusby's version of Ranzo which she tells us people complained about. Karen is giving her the trad version to hear. We had a French moment with Little Bantam Emperor and Rosie's French tunes. In Alan's absence Steve provided guitar and we had a more modern moment with Neil Young, but James Taylor was the songwriter of the evening with Vicky requesting Steve to do Sweet Baby James and Karen having dome Machine Gun Kelly - she says its a fun song!

We had a joinyiny finale with Country life & verses spread around the room, then for some inexplicable reason we were led in a verse of bread of Heaven by Dick who then did another one verse hymn.

Dave has asked us to do Xmas songs & carols, maybe the Sunday evening before Xmas, will keep you posted.

A very warm welcome to newcomers Glen and Lynn.  Glen hadn't played at a folk club for 28 years so did very well, singing Gone to be Wed, Bonnie Ship the Diamond and Big Yellow Taxi, the latter ably helped by Vicky who of course sang it at the Rebellion Brewery do. 

Dick was full of cold but still sang Limehouse Lass and Billy is the Lad beautifully and then treated us to Teenage Cremation as well. 

John and Steve were in cowboy mode with Ghost riders and Desperado, but Steve, where is your cowboy hat now?  It really suited you.

Alan and Rosie played the tune they're ..."going to play every week until they get it right" ....again.  We said it sounded right but someone suggested we only said it to stop them playing it - what lies!  Then Alan regaled us with tales of highway robbers who stole his car years ago and then returned recently to steal his CD player, clearly trying to find the Stevie Wonder album they missed the first time.  Luckily for us they hadn't got it first time so Alan and Rosie were able to learn and sing the lovely song they then sang.  Rosie was requested to do a Norfolk song so we were treated to the lament for lost railways by the Singing Postman.

Vicky plucked (notice the little pun) up the courage to play her guitar and sang Our Town by Iris Dement.  Then rather naughtily she promised she would sing more if Dave played his "Run like the devil from the excise man",  which he agreed to..... and all credit to Dave he persevered fantastically through the hysterical laughter on the other side of the room as everyone sang "ran like the deveil from the egg-sized man" and made finger movements in imitiation of little legs on eggs and Alan asked for the shakers knowing full well there'd be an egg in there!  Guess you had to be there!

Karen was in a slightly hyper mood having been behaving like a teenager at Banbury last weekend.  John and Geraldine will be keeping an eye on her at Bedworth in November!  She got croakier and coakier as the evening wore on from the dust and paint as the decorating at TJ's goes on and on, but hopefully the end is in sight.

We also discussed having a theme night, anything from a normalish theme night, to one of Karen's specials (pictures and objects and Paul's tenuous links) to having the Dick night we suggested long ago where we all sing Dick's songs - but don't tell Dick, we'd like it to be a surprise.  I fancy the blister on my toe song (did I say that? - I mean "I have a sister" of course) or possibly Bright Morning Star, but we will need to agree in advance.  Please email Karen with what you'd like to do so we can avoid people singing the same song!  Then we'll get it programmed in.

I hope this blog doesn't disappear as it's the second one I've written - where did the first one go??

See you all next Wednesday......

We had the pleasure of John MacRae's company this week and, as usual, were entertained by both his wit and his music. We heard the contrast of Steve Earle's "Ellis Unit One" with a ballad setting of "The Wild Rover", which John learned from his father who'd picked it up from seafarers at Greenock.

Dick dug out a couple of songs that we hadn't heard for a long time (and I can't remember the title of), along with the Innocent Hare.

Sting couldn't make it to Marlow Bottom this week, so Steve sang his own song about messages in bottles, as well as Garth Brooks' "Every Now and Then".

Richard Thompson couldn't make it along either, but he reclaimed his natural position as most featured songwriter, with Beeswing from John and Dimming of the Day from Karen and Steve.

Bob's own "Hamster on a Wheel" song summed up how many of us feel much of the time. We also heard his distinctive version of "You Are My Sunshine".

Rosie sang "Crippled Inside", John Lennon's tribute to his one-time song writing partner, and the deceptively titled "Happiness", popularised by Alison Krauss.

We finished with a couple of joining in numbers led by John MacRae, starting with Leadbelly's Midnight Special, which has an interesting background as a prison song. Both of these numbers were great opportunities to dig out Karen's bag of shakey eggs and other miscellaneous percussion.

We had a really fun evening and were delighted to see Dave and Norma back, though sorry the colder weather is putting an end to their travels. But it was great to hear some of Dave's songs again, including some of our favourites - "Northern Nights" and "Northern Geordie England".

It was also lovely to see Alison and Lester who were making the most of their holiday to get out and about, so we had some great melodeon tunes and some rather saucy songs from Alison including the Dog and Gun song and Kipper's Nancy Sailor.

Vicky had learnt a new one - well done! - something about Polly & dancing on your wedding day. Rosie also sang a new one & Alan informed us that when a couple are serious their record collection merges - they found they only shared one, and Rosie's new song was from that, Stevie Wonder's "Blame it on the Sun" from "Talking Book".

Alan and Rosie also told us that when Dave sang his Irish excise song, Martin could never understand why they ran like the devil from the egg sized man!

Thanks also to Bob, Steve, Dick and Karen. Dick sang a song he hadn't sung for 30 years, which Karen suggested was before she was born, to which Dick made mention of a scurrilous rumour which will not be repeated here - you have to come along to get all the benefits of the banter!