What sort of folk club is yours?

Subject: RE: What sort of folk club is yours?
From: GUEST,Ian Fyvie
Date: 15 Dec 08 - 10:04 AM

I was pleased to see the club saying 'beginners particularly welcome' is a great success.

The ageing elitists still dominant in some areas/folk scenes will be backing out soon. Should they have controlled the every nook and cranny of the folk scene folk would be dying out with them as they've generally failed to encourage a new generation (bar the odd child "star") - and been less than welcoming new groups who might be at the age of growing out of Rock-Pop and want something more intellegent (except the odd one who has obviously spent a year in her/his bedroom practising their new folky instrument in front of the mirror!)

Luckily many excluded folkies over the years have refused to be scared away by the stand-offish and marginalising attitudes of the elite to those who whose face doesnt fit - and folk has a future despite the elites!

At our singaround last night I was the oldest person there bar one. We had a10 year old lad along with his parents for the first time, investigating what we do at our club. All three want to come along to the club again - and play next visit.

Ian Fyvie

Subject: RE: What sort of folk club is yours?
From: Tyke
Date: 08 Dec 08 - 05:01 PM

Awaaaaaaaa!

Subject: RE: What sort of folk club is yours?
From: Mysha
Date: 08 Dec 08 - 03:01 PM

Hi,

Tyke, my mistake: I thought the question was by a gentle soul asking about Christmas spirit and I told him the disaster he foresaw wouldn't actually come to pass since we found a solution for that. But now I found I was wrong I can tell you the elaboration you require is since there's no money to be missed by not keeping our session I'd have to go for option 2-alt we're a we want to see eachother each month type of session.

                                                                  Mysha

Subject: RE: What sort of folk club is yours?
From: Tyke
Date: 07 Dec 08 - 07:42 PM

My question was meant to clarify a type of Club. We don't close down answer because we move the date's say's what? You don't shut because you need the money or are you a we want to see our friends each week type of club.

Subject: RE: What sort of folk club is yours?
From: Mysha
Date: 07 Dec 08 - 03:19 PM

Hi,

John, "club" means a bunch of people sticking together by choice. (Compare: "Clump".) There doesn't have to be money involved, or organisation, though in the case of music usually a minimum of both is required to keep the elements out of the elements. The essense is the in-crowd, the regulars; all four types can have those.

Tyke: We don't "close down". We've moved it up to Midwinter's Day so we don't have to lose a session at Christmas. But, having been going on for a few years now, I find it's getting harder to get through the session-less summer season. Does that answer your question?

Bye,
                                                                  Mysha

Subject: RE: What sort of folk club is yours?
From: Lowden Jameswright
Date: 07 Dec 08 - 12:27 PM

Poster on the door says "Beginners Especially Welcome"
The club's full most nights.

Subject: RE: What sort of folk club is yours?
From: Big Al Whittle
Date: 06 Dec 08 - 05:03 PM

yeh I think so. we meet other places. last week I did a gig with a poet and a singer from the club. two or three other members turned up. and on the weekend most of the gang was at a birthday party of one of the members

Subject: RE: What sort of folk club is yours?
From: peregrina
Date: 06 Dec 08 - 04:00 PM

a terrific one, but it seems to have just become a migratory bird like its name.

Subject: RE: What sort of folk club is yours?
From: Tyke
Date: 06 Dec 08 - 04:00 PM

welittledrummer do you mean that your club is not the venue itself but a group of friends who get together to enjoy the same things?

Subject: RE: What sort of folk club is yours?
From: SunrayFC
Date: 06 Dec 08 - 01:37 PM

Our club is successful.

Subject: RE: What sort of folk club is yours?
From: Big Al Whittle
Date: 06 Dec 08 - 01:14 PM

not on christmas day, or boxing day- othwise we tend to stay open and meet up in other places...It not really like a location. More like the Pickwick Club, a group of rather eccentric friends, who burst into song spontaneously and have adventures.

Subject: RE: What sort of folk club is yours?
From: Tyke
Date: 06 Dec 08 - 11:30 AM

Me, in a serious mode, trying to get back to the subject What kind of a Folk Club is Yours, Is your club the kind you miss when it's shut over the Christmas Holiday's?

Subject: RE: What sort of folk club is yours?
From: Jim Carroll
Date: 05 Dec 08 - 03:01 PM

Can anybody in the States throw any light on the story circulating here that a panel setting up a 'traditional' singing festival refused to book artists who didn't write their own material?
Jim Carroll

Subject: RE: What sort of folk club is yours?
From: Nick
Date: 05 Dec 08 - 12:46 PM

John From K

If it had been John Martyn I think he would have been disappointed. When I saw him a lot of years ago he was quite good at offering his own particular brand of roll-your-owns to the audience on occasions.

Subject: RE: What sort of folk club is yours?
From: Harmonium Hero
Date: 05 Dec 08 - 11:53 AM

Going back to my original contention that only type 3 is a folk club: what does the word 'club' mean? Type 3, which one would traditionally assume to have a regular audience, can be argued to consist of a number of people 'clubbing together' to book guest performers. A session is a group of people, not necessarily regulars, getting together to play, as a joint activity. You don't pay to join in. How is it a club?
John Kelly.

Subject: RE: What sort of folk club is yours?
From: Harmonium Hero
Date: 05 Dec 08 - 11:45 AM

While we're on the Lanky humour thing:
Bloke goes into 't vet. 'E says "I want t'ave me cat neutered". Vet says "Is it a Tom". Bloke says "No - I've fetched it along".
JK.

Subject: RE: What sort of folk club is yours?
From: GUEST,John from Kemsing
Date: 05 Dec 08 - 10:15 AM

During 63/66 we ran a number of folk clubs around SE London(Catford, Sydenham, Selhurst Park area)and on one particular occasion we booked Bert Jansch. I, for my sins, smoked "roll-your-own" at the time and my choice of tobacco then was "Old Holborn". Bert saw me rolling one and asked me if I could kindly roll one for him which I willingly did. I don`t know to this day what Bert thought he was going to get??

Subject: RE: What sort of folk club is yours?
From: Will Fly
Date: 05 Dec 08 - 09:24 AM

I wish they had existed. The first one I ever went to - around 1964 or so - was the mortal remains of a folk song and dance society, run by an elderly lady called Mrs. Parkinson, and with a resident trio that looked like Peter, Paul and Mary.

When I went down to the Cousins in Greek Street - around '65/'66 or so, for the allniter - everyone was snoozing on the floor by around 2 in the morning and coffee was the strongest thing in sight. Mind you, the night Alexis Korner and Duffy Power were in, there all sorts of little pill boxes were being passed around and, for some reason, people were awake longer...

"Depravity and loose living" - that came much later - and not in folk clubs!

Subject: RE: What sort of folk club is yours?
From: Big Al Whittle
Date: 05 Dec 08 - 09:18 AM

Wouldn't it be great to locate the sort of folk club your parents warned you about - with all kinds of depravity and loose living going on?

Did they ever exist, one wonders, apart from in Norman Tebbit and Mary Whitehouse's imagination?

Subject: RE: What sort of folk club is yours?
From: Will Fly
Date: 05 Dec 08 - 06:52 AM

That wouldn't be the Mudcat cookie, would it?

Subject: RE: What sort of folk club is yours?
From: Dave the Gnome
Date: 05 Dec 08 - 06:33 AM

I wish - Toast was during the pre-diet days! Nah - It was just that someone had eaten my cookie last night but I have now got it back:-)

Crossword clue - To egg on, 5 letters

Answer. Toast...

D

Subject: RE: What sort of folk club is yours?
From: Will Fly
Date: 05 Dec 08 - 06:15 AM

Have you been eating toast? (he asks accusingly). Or was this a mid-morning snack?

Subject: RE: What sort of folk club is yours?
From: Dave the Gnome
Date: 05 Dec 08 - 06:11 AM

I always used

"Bin man bin mam?"

"Dust mean Dust man?"

"Aye"

"No"

Cheers

DeG
(back with crumbs round his mouth)

Subject: RE: What sort of folk club is yours?
From: GUEST,Tom Bliss
Date: 05 Dec 08 - 04:47 AM

sorry - "second group" - Seegers excepted, of course.

Subject: RE: What sort of folk club is yours?
From: GUEST,Tom Bliss
Date: 05 Dec 08 - 04:45 AM

Without wanting to re-open what was anyway a side-debate on this thread, I can't help noticing on the fRoots forum that the Grammy nominations this year include:

Best Contemporary Folk/Americana Album
Joan Baez - Day After Tomorrow [Bobolink/Razor & Tie]
Ry Cooder - I, Flathead [Nonesuch Records]
Rodney Crowell - Sex & Gasoline [Work Song/Yep Roc Records]
Emmylou Harris - All I Intended To Be [Nonesuch Records]
Robert Plant & Alison Krauss - Raising Sand [Rounder Records]

Best Traditional Folk Album (!)
Kathy Mattea - Coal [Captain Potato Records]
Tom Paxton -Comedians & Angels [Appleseed Recordings]
Peggy Seeger- Bring Me Home [Appleseed Recordings]
Pete Seeger - At 89 [Appleseed Recordings]
Rosalie Sorrels - Strangers In Another Country [Red House Records]

I mention it only because I think it explains why we have such a problem with expressions like Traditional and Contemporary over here. I, myself, don't mind using the word 'folk' to describe all of the above (though I know where are plenty who would reject them all with passion), but even I'm struggling to allow the application of the the word 'traditional' to the second group.

Does the word not have the same meaning in US law as it does (just one of its definitions) in the UK; 'in public ownership?'

Tom

Subject: RE: What sort of folk club is yours?
From: Will Fly
Date: 05 Dec 08 - 03:26 AM

D'you know - I've never heard it with "mam" on the end of the line. Well, I'll go to the foot of our stairs! :D

Subject: RE: What sort of folk club is yours?
From: GUEST,DeG sans biscuit
Date: 04 Dec 08 - 06:38 PM

You only got part of it, Will

"Ast bin man bin mam?'

:D

Subject: RE: What sort of folk club is yours?
From: Mysha
Date: 04 Dec 08 - 05:36 PM

Hi,

The occasion I frequent would fall under type 0, I guess. That is, it's of the type mentioned before type 1; it's a session. I do mention it anyway, because I wonder whether this falls under the confusion of terms mentioned later. To us, "a session" means most of all that anyone who can participate in the performance is free to join in. That doesn't make a distinction between instruments or voices, and indeed we don't. The criterion "I don't count 'sessions' in amongst clubs unless you have a club that is part session and part singers!", you will understand, makes no sense to me at all.

Regarding the problem of more professional performers drawing less of a crowd, I have to add the quality perspective: Last summer I was in England, plus just far enough across the Scottish border to take the photograph, and it so happened that I did go to a folk evening with main performers. These performers were two charming ladies who unfortunately had made it a hobby to use a different tuning of their instruments for each tune or song. Their show therefore consisted of tuning, which they didn't seem particular adept at, with music in-between. The two sets of floor spots were quite enjoyable, but I'm not sure I would have come had I know the character of the main act beforehand. So if the main performers don't draw, is that really either their style of music, or the image of folk in general, or could it sometimes simply be performance?

BTW, I'd say Caledonia is easily within the 54 definition. It's based on the tradition, and anyone who knows how Dougie MacLeans found out he had a hit, will agree that it had been absorbed by the community.

                                                                Mysha

Subject: RE: What sort of folk club is yours?
From: Will Fly
Date: 04 Dec 08 - 01:57 PM

"'Ast' bin men bin?"
"Dost' mean dustbin men?"
"Aye."
"No."

Some Lancashire humour...

Subject: RE: What sort of folk club is yours?
From: Tyke
Date: 04 Dec 08 - 12:46 PM

Sorry my Dyslexic Brain has kicked in and changed Bean to Bin!
As in
"Where's tha bin."
Answer to the refuse worker "I bin on me Holiday's"
"No where's tha bin!"
"Oh I've bin to Honkong"
"No where's tha wheelie bin"
"I've really bin to Honkong"

Heard that at my Folk Club!
Sorry my Dyslexic Brain has kicked in and changed Bean to Bin!
As in
"Where's tha bin."
Answer to the refuse worker "I bin on me Holiday's"
"No where's tha bin!"
"Oh I've bin to Honkong"
"No where's tha wheelie bin"
"I've really bin to Honkong"

Heard that at my Folk Club! and I've Bean since!

Subject: RE: What sort of folk club is yours?
From: Dave the Gnome
Date: 04 Dec 08 - 10:43 AM

What have Beans got to do with music

You CAN't be serious! :-)

Beans, beans, the musical fruit
The more you eat the more you toot...

:D (eG)

PS - Glad to hear there are Guests getting good audiences. We are hoping for a belter on the 15th when Gary and Vera Aspey are on. Bit thin on the ground last week for Micron but a good time was had by all anyway:-)

D.

Subject: RE: What sort of folk club is yours?
From: BB
Date: 04 Dec 08 - 05:19 AM

Nigel, you're probably right, but you would find Shammick Acoustic in folk listings in the area, which would, hopefully, direct you to our website where it would soon be evident what sort of music goes on there.

In fact, I've just checked by googling "folk club" Devon, and you would indeed find us.

So when are you coming to see us? :-)

Barbara

Subject: RE: What sort of folk club is yours?
From: GUEST,Ian Fyvie
Date: 03 Dec 08 - 08:18 PM

Well my original made it as well - must have pressed the right button - but too soon!

Ian Fyvie

Subject: RE: What sort of folk club is yours?
From: GUEST,ian Fyvie
Date: 03 Dec 08 - 08:15 PM

Just lost a contribution in the ether - so try two

Had a brilliant guest night at our singaround-with-occasional-guest-nights club last tuesday.

I mention it because, after reading this thread the previous morning I was fearing the worst - ie guest nights at singaround clubs were attracting poor support.

We had a few apologies from regulars in advance which increased the worry, but new and occasional supporters more than made up for those ill or who don't really like guest nights, particularly when guests are unknown.

The group by the way, was Rattlebag - a five piece harmony band from Hastings - really excellent!

Ian Fyvie

Subject: RE: What sort of folk club is yours?
From: GUEST,!
Date: 03 Dec 08 - 08:06 PM

48 hours ago I was getting worried. Our Singaround-with-occasional-Guest had the next guest night arranged for that evening. What with discussion about these occasional guest nights at singaround clubs getting less support I had visions of me and the guest sitting there and no-one else!
However... despite several apologies from regulars, we more than made up for their presence by new people coming along and we had an excellent night.

The guests by the way were Rattlebag - a five piece harmony group from Hastings. I thoroughly recommend them - they're brilliant

Subject: RE: What sort of folk club is yours?
From: Aeola
Date: 03 Dec 08 - 03:55 PM

It's all those references to the 1950's!!! hasbeans!!!

Subject: RE: What sort of folk club is yours?
From: GUEST,Le Petamain
Date: 03 Dec 08 - 03:25 PM

What have Beans got to do with music I never had to use Beans!

Subject: RE: What sort of folk club is yours?
From: Tyke
Date: 03 Dec 08 - 03:20 PM

You mean they ended up where they should not have Bean!

Subject: RE: What sort of folk club is yours?
From: Acorn4
Date: 03 Dec 08 - 02:17 PM

I think they trusted too much in their satnav!

Subject: RE: What sort of folk club is yours?
From: GUEST
Date: 03 Dec 08 - 12:27 PM

It's no joke! Lord Franklin and his entire crew died from Bake Bean Poisoning. However to be more precise (Truthful) it was Lead Poisoning from sealing the cans with lead solder as they did in those day's that did it!

Please don't blow raspberries when someone starts singing the First Verse!

Subject: RE: What sort of folk club is yours?
From: Dave the Gnome
Date: 03 Dec 08 - 12:11 PM

Open can and stand in boling water for 15 minutes. Couldn't walk for 6 months...

:D (eG)

Subject: RE: What sort of folk club is yours?
From: Tyke
Date: 03 Dec 08 - 12:01 PM

Do not belive everything you read on the cans! They often tell you that they are Open Other End and they never are!

Subject: RE: What sort of folk club is yours?
From: Nigel Parsons
Date: 03 Dec 08 - 11:21 AM

But you wont find a botanical definition of what the bean is!

I'll get me haricot!!

Subject: RE: What sort of folk club is yours?
From: Tyke
Date: 03 Dec 08 - 11:12 AM

Sad one!

Subject: RE: What sort of folk club is yours?
From: GUEST,Not a definition again
Date: 03 Dec 08 - 10:45 AM

Labels on our cans don't have definitions on - only name of contents.
Frinstance - a tin of baked beans.
But - those beans could be spicy, barbecue or plain.
And I choose which I want to eat.
But you wont find a botanical definition of what the bean is!

Subject: RE: What sort of folk club is yours?
From: Dave the Gnome
Date: 03 Dec 08 - 10:06 AM

I would have asked Bryan for help directly Will, but he has fell out with me! Better not get into that:-( But, yes - I can see how useful it can be. Thanks again and I will have a go at developing the idea to suit our club.

Cheers

Dave

Subject: RE: What sort of folk club is yours?
From: Will Fly
Date: 03 Dec 08 - 09:46 AM

DeG:
What a good idea, Will. Could be expanded into the context of where folk clubs go and satisy even the most ardent critic. If we call the folk club a 'music night' with definitions like yours maybe we can atract more while ensuring that people know what they are getting in advance.

The list I linked to is edited by Bryan on a regular basis, and with (I believe) a little IT wizadry regarding dates?). It certainly is useful. I'd certainly dare to drop in to the sessions at The Bull in Ditchling - but The Pond in Brighton is pure Irish - with fiddlers like Ben Paley on tap. Scary!

Subject: RE: What sort of folk club is yours?
From: Jim Carroll
Date: 03 Dec 08 - 09:36 AM

There is no extensive folk club network in Ireland - most of the singing takes place at singing week-ends throughout the year.
There are a number of 'Singing Circles' springing up, covering the whole repertoire, (any bias towards a particular genre depending on the organisers).
"definitions are odious and unhelpful."
I know wht you mean Al - I've started ripping the labels off the cans in our cupboards - makes mealtimes far more interesting!!!!!!!!!!!!!
Jim Carroll

Subject: RE: What sort of folk club is yours?
From: Nigel Parsons
Date: 03 Dec 08 - 08:59 AM

BB:
We don't call it a folk club (not wanting to mislead the likes of Jim C!), but Shammick Acoustic (thus not calling it a club either).
Of course, that may slow down people like me who visit areas at short notice & do a quick check on the web for any 'folk club' in the area. If you are not listing under that term you may miss quite a few 'walk-ins'

Cheers
Nigel

Subject: RE: What sort of folk club is yours?
From: Dave the Gnome
Date: 03 Dec 08 - 06:24 AM

What a good idea, Will. Could be expanded into the context of where folk clubs go and satisy even the most ardent critic. If we call the folk club a 'music night' with definitions like yours maybe we can atract more while ensuring that people know what they are getting in advance.

Cheers

Dave