What an interesting venue! What an interesting club!
For Rob and I, this was the first time we had ventured into Cecil Sharp House, the home of the English Folk Dance and Song Society, near Regent’s Park in London. Every Tuesday, the Sharps Folk Club has a singaround and, in line with our desire to become better known in the London Folk scene, this was an obvious place for us to want to visit.
For those who haven’t been to Cecil Sharp House it is a lovely, if rather imposing, venue. Fortunately, we were playing in a snug little bar on the lower ground floor where the hosts were friendly and the atmosphere was warm. The room soon filled up and the small bar was selling good beer
As one might have expected for such a venerable venue, the quality of the floorsinging was excellent and varied. It seemed like almost everybody in the room was going to do a turn, and that wasn’t far off the truth of it. There was music from all parts of the British Isles and North America. The thing that struck me most was the very obvious knowledge that was held by those in that room. I have listened to folk music, almost exclusively, from the age of 17 and I confess that I only recognised every fourth song that was performed over the course of the evening. So, it was great to hear (to me at least) new material.
Rob and I appeared to go down well and, having expected to only get chance to play one possibly two numbers, we were eventually given space to perform four, with the hostess for the evening allowing us to finish the night off and saying some very kind words about our performances.
One of the songs we played was our composition Nellie Torrence and Jeannie Waldie, which is about the first (female) body snatchers in Edinburgh. A fellow floor singer paid us the ultimate compliment at the end of the night when he asked me to remind him of the title of the song as he was intending to go upstairs to the library at Cecil Sharp House at some stage to find the song and possibly research it in a bit more detail. He explained his own name was Burke and so he had an interest in such matters. However, it was a great accolade to have a well versed folk singer thinking that one of our songs was traditional. It suggests we are getting the tone and the delivery of our songs about right.