Club Night 25 March

A very special night, with a wonderful mix of performers, styles and instruments. No photos from this one, everyone was enthralled with the music and taking photos was the last thing on our minds. A cliche but this a time it's true - you had to be there!

In Michael's absence it was up to Alan to MC the night, and he had no shortage of willing performers.

A couple of impromptu bands have formed in the last few weeks, so we had Leonie, Rob and the two Bruces (who said "B1 and B2"?), who gave us a couple of Hank Williams numbers.

Then there was Gordon. Bill, Marilyn, Tiya and Adrian, fresh from their busking triumph last weekend. It's fantastic to see these groups of musicians come together, sometimes for a week, sometimes for years, to have a good time and give us some great music. In the past, Gordon has always insisted he needs his music in front of him (he's a classical flute player) but he performed a delightful improvised lead melody tonight - we're dragging him into the Folk Club way of doing things, or as some wag said, "bringing him down to our level".

Marilla is a Bush Orchestra regular on the fiddle but we don't often see her harp. She last brought it to Folk Club a couple of years ago and the results of many hours of practice were there for all to hear - time seemed to stand still, the hall rang to the beautiful resonant melodies and the whole audience was under her spell. People kept asking for more and more!

Then there was young Liam with his Axis-64 keyboard. First time we've seen an electronic instrument at the club for a long, long time. This is an unusual and fascinating instrument - it has 192 keys, arranged in a matrix pattern - see a photo and more information on the Synthtopia blog. Liam's into jazz and laid down some very cool bass lines for the rest of us to improvise to.

Moira and Sarah played a couple of brackets of lovely German folk-tunes on their violins, and also joined in with the other fiddlers for a few traditional Bush Orchestra dance tunes. Nothing if not versatile!

Gail and Rick gave us their usual spirited performance (always good to hear a bit of slide guitar, thanks Rick), and Gail did a fantastic job of singing the echo part of Califormia Dreaming, with Tiya taking the lead. Two great voices together!

There was poetry too with Dave giving us a new one from C.J. Dennis' Songs of a Sentimental Bloke. Tonight it was Hitched, which carries on the love story of the Bloke and Doreen - in this poem they get married. And Greg J donned beret, sunnies and fake goatee for a bit of beat poetry - something about swimming in his own brain, although naturally I was far too uncool to really understand it...got a huge round of applause though.

There was so much more...Greg O and Eamonn with a bracket of superb hornpipes on fiddle and recorder, Greg F belting out Stand By Me, Bernard and Sarah with a wonderful rhumba on piano and violin (we must get that piano tuned), Jane with a couple of Gospel numbers, Gerry showing the banjo flag with a couple of old-time tunes...we just kept going past 11 o'clock as there were so many tunes to play. See you next month!