The dates for our new regular session have now been confirmed.

The session will run on the second Tuesday of the month so thats:

13th January
10th February
10th March
14th April

The plan is that the first half of the evening will be suitable for beginners so if you only have Winster Gallop in your repertoire then that’s fine.

The later part of the evening (say from 9:30 onwards) will be for everyone including more experienced players who want something a bit more challenging.

BUT that’s not to say we don’t want the more experienced players to come and help out earlier on. If you get fed up (and assuming there’s no football on the telly) the pub have said they don’t mind if you want to sit in the main bar and play there before rejoining the main session later on. We’d encourage all players to come and help out the less experienced people.

We’ll be concentrating on the English repertoire for the time being.

Admission will be free and we’ll post up more details shortly.

It’ll only work with support from the community so let’s all get stuck in.

Looking forward to it!

Sad news arrives that guitarist Davy Graham has passed away.

Born in 1940 Davy was one of the most significant figures in the development of fingerstyle guitar playing.

He wrote the seminal guitar instrumental Anji as was as developing the DADGAD tuning.

In Yesterday’s show on Resonance 104.4FM, as a change from the usual archive/field recordings of “traditional” performers I played tracks representing how “revival” performers interpreted traditional music in the 1970s (I did a similar thing with my November show and the 60s)

The tracks played were:

Steeleye Span – The Hills of Greenmore

Robin & Barry Dransfield – Bold Nelson’s Favourite (Bold Nelson’s Praise/Princess Royal/Saddle the Pony)

Nic Jones – Seven Yellow Gypsies

Tony Rose – April Morning

Dick Gaughan – Rattlin’ Roarin’ Willie/The Friar’s Britches

Dave Burland – The Blacksmith

Oak – Scan’s Polkas

The Bothy Band – The Kesh Jig/Give Us a Drink of Water/The Flower of the Flock/ Famous Ballymore

The New Victory Band – Harper’s Frolick/Bonny Kate

Flowers & Frolics – Grandfather’s Tune/ He played his Ukelele as the Ship went Down/Mickey’s Son and Daughter

Old Swan Band – Winster Gallop/ Four Hand Reel/Dark Girl Dressed in Blue

Tony Hall (guest at Walthamstow Folk Dec 21st) – Trumpet Hornpipe

Etchingham Steam Band – Leapfrog/Young Collins/Shooting

Bandoggs – Rose of Allendale

The total music time in the 1 hour show was 47 minutes 34 seconds.

My next show will be in the new Year. The normal Thursday shows will be suspended on 25th December and 1st January, returning on 8th. During the two Christmas weeks the sation will be broadcasting specials including a daily Traditional Music Hour from Monday 22nd to Friday 26th at 3:00 pm. These will be randomly selected from the archives so may include some of my old shows.

Walthamstow Folk is starting a regular monthly English tune session in the New Year. The plan is to pick a weekday evening, run from 8-10, and you’re all welcome to come along with your acoustic instruments and join in. The first hour will be a beginner’s session, where we lead easy tunes from a list at a steady slowish pace. The second hour will be more of a free-for-all, where people can play whatever they like. Session nights will be free.

We’re sticking pretty much to tunes in the English tradition, though obviously tunes from all over the world find their way into the English tradition, and I’m sure they will in this one as well. But it’s not an Irish session or a singaround. (For an excellent singaround, you should try the Waltham Abbey folk club on a Monday night).

In case you’ve never played English tunes; they normally come in 32 bars, consisting of an 8 bar A part (repeated), followed by an 8 bar B part (repeated). This is played two, or three, or four, or ten times, or however many people like. One person starts, and people join in when they know what the tune is. After a bit (commonly three times through, or indicated by the word ‘change’, or by a grunt, or a nod of the head or a movement of the leg), the first person changes to a different tune and everyone else joins in again. And then, perhaps, a third tune. Or not.

To get you started, here are some tunes you might like to try; we’ll get music up by and by for people who read it, but these tunes are easily findable in many tune books or online. They’re organised into sets, but you can play tunes in any set you like, or just on their own. Most of these are tunes we play at the club on Sunday evening, in our little scratch band. You’re very welcome to come and join us then too.

Reg Hall and chums live at the Resonance FM studios

We’ve had a nice namecheck on the Folk and Roots MySpace blog.

http://blog.myspace.com/index.cfm?fuseaction=blog.view&friendID=34898818&blogID=453197971

As some of you will know I am one of the presenters of the Traditional Music Hour on Resonance 104.4FM which is broadcast in the London Area.

My next show is on Thursday December 11th at 14:00 (2pm to the “traditional” amongst you) If you have trouble with reception, or live outside the London area you can catch it live via the Internet at www.resonancefm.com

I will publish the playlist for each show here as soon as I have decide it (which may be after the show as, being broadcast live, things can change!)

Listen in on the weeks when I am not presenting as well, as the other presenters, usually Reg Hall or Simon Ritchie, do an excellent show.

Some people think I have a privileged position and can get Russ to book what I like. Nothing could be further from the truth. If you keep suggesting someone then it’s a fine line before that turns into nagging and we all know how effective that is. Not.

We first saw Uiscedwr on our honeymoon – that’s 2003 – and I’ve been suggesting them ever since!

This Sunday – 7th December – they finally get to play our club, many line up changes down the line.

I can’t wait. See you Sunday.

Claire

Last Saturday I paid a visit to a new live music event run by Jerry Spangles who may be familiar to regulars to the club as the bass player in Graham Larkbey and the Escape Committee who you can see every month at the wonderful Tunnel Vision Thursday.

The venue is The Waiting Rooms in Palmers Green overland station. It actually is the station waiting room – it’s absolutley tiny and if you need a pee you have to get the key from the bar and go down to the one on the platform!

They run a PA so it’s a bit formal but basically they have a series of guests get up and do two or three song sets. However Jerry keeps it very loose and spontaneous and at any point other musicians may get called up to join in. That could be a recipie for disaster but it worked really well.

We had some blues, some jazz, some old-timey / bluegrassy stuff and I did a couple of sets on guitar and banjo.

The next one is on December 27th and you can find out about the venue at http://www.hcweb.pwp.blueyonder.co.uk

Liz Simcock - big in Killarney

Welcome to the new Walthamstow Folk Club blog which we intend to use to share all the little snippets of news we come across and share the occasional thought and observation.

We have Liz Simcock on Sunday 14th December.  She’s a really first class singer songwriter who plays with a guitarist and a bass player.

The last time she played for us I bought my sister a copy of her CD and she liked it so much she’s actually traveling all the way from her home in Ireland to see Liz on the 14th!

But otherwise I’m really looking forward to it..!