Archived Reviews

Theme night: A Song For jiva

During the summer weeks club organiser Keith Taylor takes a rest from running the nights and club members are asked to take on MC duties. Theme nights were part of last year's summer madness, and they were so successful that there are themes for summer 2009 too.

To celebrate our tying the knot (the wedding is on 12th August), Keith declared this week's theme to be "A song for jiva" - what a lovely, thoughtful idea - and guess who was earmarked to run the night? Yep, right first time... jiva... Having run Ashington Folk Club for four years, and having MC'd a few Cramlington nights we were more than happy to oblige, but couldn't help wondering what this particular theme would have in store for us.

It was a great, fun night - full of good spirited humour, warmth and friendship... Cramlington really is THE most happening folk club that we know of, and we're proud to be counted among the core residents.

We started with two Thompson songs - 'Galway To Graceland' by Richard Thompson and 'No Telling' by Linda Thompson - then continued the night as MCs (and Jimmy even manned the PA desk while regular soundman Dave played and sang). There was a great mix of performers (15 acts in all), each playing two songs... many adapted the lyrics of songs to put a jiva slant on them, others sang some of our favourite songs, and there were even four songs that had been especially composed for this evening, Peter Meek even managed to persuade us to join him (totally unrehearsed) for 'In Spite Of Ourselves' - a cover of the John Prine and Iris DeMent song. And, breaking with jiva tradition, but keeping to the Cramlington Folk Club tradition, the act that started the night got up at the end for one more song - indeed it was our very own 'One More Song'... and we even managed to continue another Cramlington practice by asking other performers to join us in a 'big band' bash.

During the evening we had received good wishes, cards (and even a bottle of Champagne) from friends - and Keith surprised us at the end of the night with a presentation from the whole club... we were almost speechless...

Bless you, Cramlington Folk Club - and thanks again for making our last public performance before the USA trip such a memorable and enjoyable event.

jiva