Well, what sort of disguise is a moustache anyway? Though I am wearing mine a lad longer these days but just to cover my gap until January when I get my new front tooth... Even so there are some truths one dare not mutter, not even into one's cups of a blasted winter evening when the icy winds and icy police sirens are howling around your favourite filthy back room of your filthy old pub in which your favourite filthy folk-faithful gather to give voice to... Well last night the nearest I got to a ballad was Anne Boleyn (a new arrangement with fiddle) but I touched the trad with Collier's Rant and Robert Burn's Winter : A Dirge (To be Sung to the Tune of MacPherson's Rant) (both of which you can hear me singing on YouTube). R & I got into some nice grooves based around a sequence of Gillian Welch covers - what is it about Gillian Welch songs that inspire my best harmonies I wonder? But Rock Of Ages is just transcendent anyway. So - true old nu-folk soul & lots of old country swing & isn't Dave Peters just the greatest singer in the universe bar none? His Little Pot Stove and Gallant Poacher were definate highpoints of the evening, as was Ross's Rattlin' Roarin' Wullie and Roving on a Winter's Night on with we hit some spot on 4-part harmonies. And Suzie sang beautifully, and Vicky sang beautifully too (even if I don't remember what) but Colin sang a picturesque winter scene from a train window that had us all enchanted even as we passed a huge tin of Cadbury's Roses and exchanged Christmas cards with much mirth and typical goodwill... But even so I wouldn't take a child in there, although I did take mine in once though at 29 and 22 I reckoned they were just about old enough. No big ballads (though I was pondering Child Owlet at one point but in my fiddle intro found myself playing MacPherson's Rant instead, hence the Burns' song; always nice to start one song & end up singing another) but if someone had sang one, it would have been welcomed and cherished and nurtured as part of our perfect evening in a very Child Friendly Folk Club...