Hosted by Ella
​This evening began slowly as performers and our small audience gradually arrived. Some regulars were not with us for various reasons, but I eventually opened the evening playing Norah Jones’s ‘Shoot the Moon’ incredibly badly on keyboard. (What became of all those hours of practice I ask myself!?!) What a lovely forgiving group of people the Six Bells Folk and Blues Club are…….but at least I managed to perform my second song with far greater dignity. It is a song that I wanted to sing for Chris Mansell, who founded Six Bells F&B way back in the 1990s. He passed away last September. Sarah McLachlan’s ‘Angel’ (In the Arms of the Angel) is such a beautiful song.

Simon followed me with two very different songs, assisted by Lisa on washboard. Turns out that Lisa has an absolute gift for playing washboard, having never handled the instrument before. The first was about ‘Precious time slipping away’, obviously a serious washboard piece. Having recognised the value of Lisa’s accompaniment, Simon decided to give us ‘Too Much Snow (if you get my drift)’ giving further scope for percussive interpretation. We loved it. Hooray!

Chris, the drummer and a newcomer persuaded Manus to accompany him with a couple of blues songs: ‘Got my mojo working’ and ‘Bo Diddly’. With no practice, Manus was doing a stalwart job and Heather also joined in with some chords on piano filling out the backing.

Manus remained at the mic to perform Jackson C Crank’s ‘Blues Run the Game’ from the 1965 album of the same name, with his usual very skilful guitar interpretation. His next song ‘Murray’s Bar’ was self-penned and reminisced over his early musical years.

Chris (CJM) announced that he was due to become a pensioner the following day and sang ‘It’s only Time’, a retrospective, melancholy song about the past. ‘Leaf’ followed with the contemplation of a leaf caught in a spider’s web. Becoming a pensioner is obviously a major turning point, but with all endings come beginnings.

Our resident duo Lisa and Jason, performed ‘Tale of the Tapestry’. They always interweave both voice and guitar so beautifully. Going back in time, they then performed Jason’s dad’s song ‘The Glory of Love’, which despite the weather and the somehow discombobulated feel of the evening, (or maybe that was just me?) captured some real Mid-summer spirit, I felt. Lovely stuff.

Heather sang her song ‘Body Bound’ which voiced her concerns about physical limitations that come with the passing years, but that her spirit is free to fly. Woohoo. Setting an AA Milne poem/story she continued with ‘The King’s Breakfast’ adding music….. the king ‘likes a little butter on my bread’.

A Native American proverb was Brenda’s starting point, and a very valid one it remains: ‘When the last tree is cut, the last fish caught, when to breathe the air is sickening, you will realise, too late, that you can’t eat money’. She followed this with a poem about ‘the Little things in Life that mean a lot’, encouraging gratitude. She completed her performance acapella with the gospel song ‘Were You There (When They Crucified My Lord)’ an African-American spiritual first printed in 1899.

Mike followed with some blues on guitar ‘Worried Life Blues’… Lord , lord, it hurts so much for us to part… a blues standard originally recorded by Big Maceo Merriweather in 1941. He rounded off his spot with American soul singer Sam Cooke’s ‘Bring it on Home to Me’, released in 1962.

Nelson noted that the tone of the evening was reflective. His performance, with lots of reverb on the guitar, was more upbeat: everybody wants, everybody dreams, ‘To be Elvis’. From his latest album he then sang us ‘Waterfalls’.

Emma was telling us that she has been complaining about the weather most of her life and compiled a collection of poems called ‘A year in Scotland’ reminding us that the weather has been quite bad enough here but that it was worse in Scotland. Her song was about cats: ‘I’m Minded to Murder your Moggy’ which ended on a postscript to remember to look down your cat-flap. She always makes us laugh.

The room became even more sparsely peopled, but there was a third song from most of those who remained.

​Manus sang ‘For You, There’ll be No More Crying’, .. For you, there’ll be no more crying, For you the sun will be shining…’, a Fleetwood Mac song.

Chris sang ‘The Last Song’ : ‘.. should be a sad song but not for you and me.’

Lisa and Jason were facing up to yesterday with some lovely harmonies and guitar work in their beautiful song ‘ Song of Silhuoette’.

Heather’s final song had us in a cowboy saloon sitting on bar-stools, but the song that had the potential of a ‘sing-a-long’ was falling on a rather empty room by this time.

Nelson completed the evening with a song whose title I cannot decipher from my handwriting, taking us out on a strong note. Apologies Nelson.

Despite it being a rather ‘odd’ evening and a bit thin on numbers, we nonetheless had the pleasure of a lot of very good musicianship, singing and speaking with abundant good humour and affability. The Six Bells F&B is a treasure and we owe our thanks to Jason for his continuing promotion of the club, setting up, taking down …. And also to CJM and Manus for stepping in to operate the sound desk when Jason was out front performing.

​Thank you everyone. See you soon, Ella

Hosted by Chris

Poem and Blog  by Jason:
Songwriters of the World unite
Hosted by the cat in the hat
Songwriters of the darkness and the light
Life’s Rich Tapestry and all of that
 
Another great night at the Six Bells, hosted by Chris, we enjoyed performances by Manus, The Whale & The Dragonfly, Mike, Lisa & Jason, Frank, Helga, Laura, Heather, Emma, Simon, Nelson, and Terry.