Marlow Bottom Acoustic Club

MBAC re-emerged at The Dog & Badger this week after its enforced hibernation. The club’s only met once since the Xmas meal on 15th December, and Rosie and I were away for that. It was especially a shame that the ‘Gerry Miller feature evening’ on the 23rd December was cancelled due to snow and Gerry’s bad back. Gerry’s now back in Australia but, as he’d intended to buy the drinks on that evening, he left an envelope of cash with us. Thanks to his great generosity, this bought the first round of drinks this week, and will do the same for the next couple of weeks too. Cheers Gerry.
Kate McGarrigle died this week, so Karen sang her unaccompanied version of Heart Like A Wheel, probably the McGarrigle sisters’ most famous song due to cover versions by Linda Ronstadt and The Corrs. Karen’s other songs (with Roger) were This Old Town (slightly different to Steve’s version), Ye Jacobites By Name and Kate Wolf’s Give Yourself to Love.

I'm not sure that the link was intentional, but David sang Dead Skunk by Kate McGarrigle’s ex-husband, Loudon Wainwright III. He also sang Too Close To The Wind by Stuart Marston, a Northampton school teacher and recorded by Nicol/Swarbrick and Fairport. The song is apparently about the Culworth gang of highwaymen who were the last group to be hanged in their home town. Alison sang Working On A Railroad and the cheery (not!) Jacob’s Dream. The latter was written by Julie Lee and recorded by Alison Krauss. Simon contrasting songs were Lust For a Sailor and Let It Be (with much singing along).

We’re glad to see Martin B coming along regularly with eclectic material. Tonight we had Tom Rush’s No Regrets, best known from The Walker Brothers’ hit version, and Paul Simon’s For Emily Wherever I May Find Her. Both versions were accompanied by just guitar, without the big productions that the familiar version of each has.

G K Chesterton made an appearance too, his poem Wine and Water being adapted into a fine song by Terry. The key line is “Don’t care where the water goes if it doesn’t get into the beer”. Terry also sang Koshieville and Peter Bellamy’s Danny Deever.

Fred has written a bunch of really good songs. Tonight’s was If You Love Me, Bring Me the Moon. It was so good that he sang it 1½ times, due to a memory lapse first time around.

This evening’s starting number (from Dick as always) was Bring Us a Barrel, which we hear a little less than we used to. His other numbers were Let Union Be and Turkish Men of War. Ian sang The Earlson Sword Dance Song and Lizzie Lindsay.

Last and perhaps not least, Rosie and I served up the Irish polkas Teahan’s Favourite/Maggie in the Woods, the French Schottishe à Bethanie plus That Ole Devil Called Love and Dolly Parton’s The Grass is Blue.

We’re at The Prince Albert at Frieth on 26th January, where we expect the usual good turnout.

Wed 30th December 2009

The last Wednesday of the year was a great evening. Apologies for delay in writing it up – I went to Wales the next morning – well better than no excuse! Also, apologies in advance if I get anything wrong as after 3 weeks I may not get everything right.

Dick opened the evening with Let Union Be and later gave us Limehouse Lass. Eddy, one of 4 very welcome newcomers who came along sang Rap at Her Bank which I don’t think I’ve heard since Martin Herbert moved away. It was lovely to see Geraldine who accompanied an on-time John as there was no Orpheus Choir practice. John sang Sing John Bull after trying to sing something that just wouldn’t come out with the right tune! Later he also sang Flog Em and Flay Em.

Alison sang the lovely If I Should Fall from the Cirque Du Soleil. Dave & Co sang Loudon Wainwright’s Dead Skunk in the Middle of the Road, and also Fisherman’s Blues. Later Dave sang an Incredible String Band song about a Log Cabin Home in the Sky. DAS (Dave Alison and Simon) sang the Sun it Goes Down (about the new year) and played The Moll in the Wod. Simon also helped us finish the evening by leading a rousing tune.

Delia and Stuart managed fantastically well playing a very difficult tune – congratulations to them.

Steve sang Union Miners and later accompanied Karen in We’ll Sing Allelujah. He also played some acoustic bass on Here in California performed by Roger and Dave Fenner on guitars and Karen on vocals – quite an experience. Then SteveRoger and Karen did Lowlands which went very well. Karen and Roger also fitted in Bells of Norwich at some point.

Tim Frost, who we haven’t seen for many a year but was ferrying children to High Wycombe and back, sang the lovely Season of Peace by Siah khan, and then delighted us all with his recently written All Gods Gritters Got a Place on the Road – excellent stuff!

John from Tring gave us The Lime Juice Ship (I seem to remember being very impressed with his learning the vast number of words in the song) and later searching For Lambs. Stuart Fletcher tried to pass as there were a lot of people but was persuaded to sing – he gave us a song his family used to sing in the car (might make a good theme night as I’m sure we all used to sing in the car on family trips out) – he didn’t know the title but the moral of the story was “don’t lie” and it sounded to me like a music hall song. It had the words “Under the lilac he played his guitar…”

Andy and Richard had us all singing along a lot to Tracks of My tears, Gypsy Man and In the Peace of Countyside. Later they did Somewhere over The rainbow and Old Kent Road.

So another eclectic mix of wonderful song and tune.

See you all on Wednesday in 2010 for another wonderful year with Marlow Bottom Acoustic Club. We will be starting the year by buying everyone a drink from Gerry who is now on his way to Australia. Gerry was due to play a feature evening on his last Wednesday in the country but a combination of bad back and snow unfortunately prevented the evening from taking place – a great shame. We will miss Gerry’s lovely singing and playing and his great choice of songs. Gerry had intended to buy us all a drink on that last evening and was exceptionally kind in presenting us with an envelope to pay for drinks for everyone. Keep in touch Gerry – we hope to see you making comments on the blog from time to time!

Today fresh batch of snow almost certainly means that we'd have little or no attendance at The Prince Albert tonight, so we've decided to call off tonight's session.

We'll all have to wait yet another week before playing all that new material we learned over Xmas.

As several of us have had enough adventures in the snow recently, we've decided to call off tonight's session at The Belle Vue.