During the pandemic and until we feel comfortable to return to normal, Dreamers meets as a live Zoom session starting at our usual time of 7.30 p.m. on Sundays. As always, we welcome visitors and MCs will do their best to make sure everyone who wants gets at least one contribution. Priority is given to those regulars and friends who have supported us through the pandemic. For more details please contact ntmorson@aol.com or DM the Dreamers Facebook page. As soon as we can, we’ll announce our return to normal on this website and Fb.
Friday 21st January 2022
Hello and welcome to this week’s Dreamers Newsletter.
As always a big thank you to all who came along to last Sunday’s session. It was lovely to be able to fit everyone in including Maureen from Vancouver (with a great Cape Breton chorus song) in transit to her (slightly later) club in the North East but really everyone did themselves proud.
As you know, there are changes coming to the official covid regulations in the near future. Changes at short notice make life difficult – I’ve been following news of the huge Celtic Connections event in Glasgow. After a virtual event last year, this was originally planned to go live again in 2022. Then Scottish Government brought in restrictions which meant many of the live events planned were impossible so the organisers were scrabbling around to see what could be salvaged. Then rules changed again and quite a lot of the live programme has been restored with more than 50 shows still programmed. Fortunately, for those of us who find Glasgow a bit far, they had got far enough with plans for on-line events to produce 12 hours of recorded live content which will be available at a price of £25 over a three week period from 26th January. These tickets and more detail are available from tomorrow afternoon (21st January) at https://www.celticconnections.com/ Great work by the organisers but what a nightmare for them!
Nearer home, Bodmin Folk Club has been meeting now for a few weeks and has Baldricks Plan as their next guests with an exciting new addition to their line-up. Check the web-site or facebook for more news and regulations (http://www.bodminfolk.co.uk/). Penzance Folk Club has also now met a couple of times, very cautiously, on a members only basis and with small numbers. Hopefully, Dreamers will be able to do likewise next month though, as with the other clubs, it may be a while before everyone feels comfortable to return after living under the shadow of covid for so long.
Returning to virtual events Live to your Living Room has a couple who sound as though they have embraced the online world so much that, whilst they are now doing live shows, they are finding it hard not to keep returning to their jobs in cyber! This is Vicki Swan and Jonny Dyer with a special show next Wednesday, Friday, 26th January, to celebrate the birthday of the immortal Robert Burns, an evening of Burns songs, pipe tunes, a story and a haggis (bring your own). It’s at 8.00 p.m and tickets at £15 come from Coming up on Live to your Living Room | Online Livestream Gig
Whilst we look forward to getting back to the live world of clubs and festivals and we didn’t know what to expect when all this started, we have made plenty of new friends from all over the UK and from all round the world and enjoyed their music. So we are looking at ways we can keep all that going in some form in future as an additional option for those who want. Hopefully more news of that before long too.
Another online site which has become familiar is Folk on Foot (Folk On Foot) They have a new episode with the great Kathryn Tickell (with her Dad, Mike, who introduced her to the folk tradition) performing songs and stories inspired by the Northumbrian countryside near the River Rede. And on Tuesday 1st February Folk on Foot has a special show of the highlights of 2021 from Cecil Sharp House looking back at the first full year of the Official Folk Albums Chart with live performances and interviews with artists who have featured the chart. On their youtube channel.
That’s all for this week. Hope to see you on Sunday night as usual for another great evening.
Until then, all the best
Nigel