Marlow Bottom Acoustic Club

Whenever two or three English folkies are gathered together, at least one Richard Thompson song is amongst them.......

The man himself is 60 on 3rd April so I thought it would be a nice idea if we all tried to bring a Richard Thompson song along to perform on our regular Wednesday evening at The Prince Albert at Frieth on 8th April. There's no requirement to learn the Richard Thompson guitar parts. It would help to avoid duplication if you added a comment to this post to nominate your song or songs.

We've apparently been getting the names of Fred's pieces wrong. As he helpfully produced a crib sheet for tonight, I can confidently report that he started this week with Put The Cake On The Dresser (that I know as Cooley's) and Smash The Windows on the whistle. He sang Ae Fond Kiss - this was a either had a timely Valentine's theme or a belated Burns Night one. He later added Dagen Gryr.

Stuart and Delia were on particularly good form for a perky rendition of Blue Muslin. Delia's solo spots were Blaydon Races and Raggle Taggle Gypsy.

Steve brought his own fine song, Empty Space, out of exile to great appreciation. His other two numbers were unaccompanied - Country Life and a second outing for Unison in Harmony.

James Taylor has a particular style that lots of guitar players of a certain age try and don't quite pull off. Gerry nailed it with Fire and Rain though. He's now been coming long enough for us to hear songs from his database a second time. Tonight's was Mike McClellan's The One I Love.

Some of the choices of numbers were influenced by the volume from the card school at the bar as the evening went on. The rest of them were:

Dick: Daddy Fox, Limehouse Lass, Bring Us a Barrel
Dave H: his own song Plough & Sow, plus The Berwick Jigs and Bear Dance on melodeon
Rosie and me: Captain Byng/Peg Ryans/Maid of Ardagh (polkas on melodeon and mandolin), That Ole Devil Called Love, Fishing Blues
Me: a somewhat shaky Sportsman's Hornpipe on mandolin
Karen & Roger: As I Roved Out
Roger: Til this Day Is Done
Karen: One Down The Road
Karen, Roger, Rosie and Steve: Look At The Coffin
Dave F and Simon: Rolling Minstrels, Chumbawumba's Add Me, Games People Play, Bucks Free Press
John: I Want To See Bright Lights Tonight, If You Had a Brain

We're at our other country pub venue next week - the Prince Albert at Frieth. Get there early for a good seat (and to help with the furniture moving)

Another full house this week as The Pegasus is proving popular – nice atmosphere, plenty of space and good beer.

Dave Heath led Young Collins and Princess Royal to start the evening off in full swing followed by Dick getting our voices going with Bring Us A Barrel. Gerry changed the mood with the Beatles delicate little song Julia and then we were off on another chorus with Steve’s Green Hills of Antrim. Alan and Rosie led polkas and then gave us the topical My Funny Valentine. Later in the evening we were treated to another topical song – John’s newly written parody (of Summertime Blues) entitled Credit Crunch Blues – well done John. Gerry later sang the lovely Vincent, Dick grinned while singing She Loved A Portuguese, and Rosie continued the Valentine’s theme with Looking In The Eyes Of Love.

Kerraliegh and Martin came along for their second shot of MBAC and gave us Neil Young’s Old Laughing Lady (one of Alan’s favourites), Mushaboom by Feist and Dumb I Am by Nina Nastasia. They are an excellent duo.

It was lovely to welcome Steve Donnely who was guesting at Readifolk on Sunday. He sang the lovely John of Dreams, Paddy’s Going Home (his own composition) and more but I can’t remember what! Lovely to see you Steve and thanks for the email to us later saying how much you’d enjoyed the evening - it’s always good to get feedback from visitors.

Delia gave us the unaccompanied Can You Sew Cushions, and Marie’s Wedding and Stuart, whose Truro Agricultural Show was featured on Marlowfm online radio, sang My Old Game Cock.

Karen and Roger sang Catch the Wind and Follow the Heron Home, and later Karen sang The Circle Game with Steve. Dave and Norma sang Dave’s own excellent Tolpuddle song and Dave led some more tunes – Jack Robinson and Old Tom.

The Fenners & Simon gave us The Irish Lads, Simon sang Martin (A brother Like), and Alison sang the poignant How Can I Keep From Singing. Later they did Meet on the Ledge with everyone joining in the well known chorus.

Later our harpist France turned up and played O’Carolan’s Si Bheag Si Mhor with Roger – very much appreciated – excellent musicianship from both of them, and so lovely to hear the harp.

We will be at The Pegasus again on the 25th March, so do come along as it’s a lovely venue.

In the meantime we will be at The Old Ship on Wed 18th Feb, and The Prince Albert on Wed 25th Feb, both lovely little pubs with a warm cosy atmosphere.

Andy Fowler of http://www.marlowfm.co.uk/ recorded some of last week's club and will be playing 7 tracks from Marlow Bottom Acoustic Club members on Sat 7th Feb at 18:00 - 20:00 "The Folk & World Music Show" with Andy Fowler & Paul Mansell. When you go on the site just click on the "Listen Online Now" box on the top right hand corner of the home page.

The programme is repeated on Monday 9th Feb at the same time, 6-8pm.

To read when programmes are on click on "programmes" on the left hand menu list then click on "schedule" which will then have appeared under the word "programmes".

I wonder how many times John Martyn's May You Never has been sung in folk clubs this week. Bob was back after a while away and did the honours for us.

Several other singer/songwriters from the 60s and 70s featured tonight. Gerry sang Paul Simon's Cathy's Song, James Taylor's Shower The People and Don McLean's Castles In The Air (but nothing from Cat Stevens this week!). Bob added Tom Paxton's Last Thing On My Mind.

We were pleased to welcome and hear Creag, who started with the excellent I'm Your's by Jason Mraz, an upcoming Czech-American singer. He later joined in with the theme with Leonard Cohen's Hallelujah. Good luck to Creag in Bristol.

St Patrick's Day will be upon us soon, so the Irish repertoire will more prominent for the next few weeks. Tonight, we had:

• Bold Donnelly, Off To California/Tomgraney Castle, Silver Spear/Sally Gardens (Rosie and me)
• The Rare Old Times and Ride On (Karen and Roger)
• The Jolly Beggarman / The Wise Maid (Karen, Roger and Rosie)

We also heard:

• Dido Bendigo, The Lusty Smith and She Loved a Portuguese (Dick)
• Almaz (Rosie and me)
• The Unlaid Maid (Rosie)
• The King of Rome (Karen)
• The Princess Royal (Roger)
• You Are My Sunshine (Bob)
• Lassie Yet/Tenpenny Bit, Oranges in Bloom, Nobby Hall (Simon)
• The Old Dun Cow (Brin)
• Rough Justice and Bournemouth (John)

We're back at The Pegasus in Marlow Bottom next week. Our last evening there was great. There's plenty of room, so do come along.

This was our first evening at the newly refurbished Pegasus in Marlow Bottom which now provides fabulous beer, food and wine – go eat there if you haven’t! The bar at The Pegasus is spacious and so we were all able to sit comfortable with plenty of room for instruments, including France’s harp. We had an excellent attendance with most of our regulars and a great evening of varied song and tune. We hope to be at The Pegasus one Wednesday every month, so now have 4 venues again.

Another first was Andy Fowler from Marlowfm radio, who came along to record the evening and who will be putting together a selection of songs and tunes from the evening to play on Marlowfm in the near future. We will let you know date when we hear from Andy. Andy very much enjoyed the evening and chatted to lots of us, and hopes some of us might be interested in performing for a live show and the music festival planned for the summer.

Music will feature regularly on the radio station and the following information is from the website, “Evenings and weekends on Marlowfm will be given over to specialist format programmes; Jazz, Blues, R & B, Folk, World Music, Big Band, Classical and Indie will probably all feature in addition to 'magazine', documentary and current-affairs shows along with live concerts. Andy Fowler will be back talking about and playing the best Folk music around and Paul Mansell will focus on World Music... past, present and future.”

At present Marlowfm is an on-line radio station only, apart from 19th May to 15th June 2009 covering Regatta time, when they will be broadcasting on FM. Have a look at the website at http://www.marlowfm.co.uk/ and why not try out the Marlowfm jukebox with a great eclectic mix of music. You can send in the names of your favourite tracks which they will then add to the jukebox playlist.

Welcome to Martin and Kerraleigh, who came along for the first time and did fantastically to sing and play so well in public for the first time. We look forward to seeing them again.

The evening included some of the following. Apologies for any songs & tunes I’ve missed.

Instrumentals / Tunes

Stuart W: The Tempest by Doug Smith, Je Te Ve (guitar)
France: Y Pwy (Harp)
Roger & France: Planxty Fanny Power (Harp & Guitar)
Fred: Roll Ye Gentle & At the End of the Bay, Selyefloyel – a Swedish tune) (flute)
Paul: Wittingham Green Lane, The Duke of Fife’s Welcome to Deeside (melodeon)
Alan & Rosie: Various tunes (guitar, melodeon)

Accompanied Songs

Gerry: Just a Song & Dance Man, Father & Son (guitar)
Rosie &Alan: Killing the Blues, Don’t Let it Bring You Down (guitar & melodeon)
Alison : Snow White Dove, Swallow (guitar & duet concertina)
Dave, Alison & Simon: Come all You Rolling Minstrels (guitar, melodeon & concertina)
Dave F & Simon: Live This Life (Met a Man Named Jesus) (guitar & melodeon)
Karen & Steve: Crazy Man Michael (guitar)
Karen & Roger: Dimming of the Day, John Mitchel (guitar)
Kerraleigh & Martin: I Come After You, In the Evening (Nina Nastasia), Tired of this Life,
Caroline (Dawn Landez) (guitar)

Unaccompanied Songs

Dick: Come Me Lads Let Us Be Jolly, Bonnie Bunch of Roses O
Steve: River Days
Stuart F: Truro Agricultural Show
Delia: Where Ravens Feed, Keep You in Peace Till We Meet Again
John: Walk the Iron Road

Wed 4th Feb is at The Belle Vue in High Wycombe, weather permitting!

We’re back at The Pegasus on Wednesday 11th February and then at the end of March and April. Do come along if you can.