Detlef's report from Folk Club # 163 in December 2025

 Folk Club in December 2025 – guests from Scotland 

As he has done almost every December since 2011, Simon Kempston from the Scottish capital Edinburgh joined us to present his latest compositions. This has become a cherished tradition, and we hope it will continue for many years to come. We look forward to his performance every time. This time, he brought along Paul Tasker, a long-time friend from Scotland with whom he has performed several times (including last summer) at the Edinburgh Festival. 

But I don't want to get ahead of myself, because the usual order of the evening begins, as always, with John Harrison. This time, he started the evening by presenting songs from his repertoire: ‘The Snows, They Melt The Soonest’ (English folk song), “Geoffrey” (by Jonathan Ole Wales Rogers) and ‘The Night Watchman’ (Big Bill Broonzy), which we always enjoy hearing. 

Kai Hoffstetter came up with a lovely idea. He told us a cute Christmas story. He had set up a small, festively decorated table with a music box, sat down behind it and told the story of a cooking pot that wanted to be a horse. The kitchen appliances talk to each other at night. And as it happens, a fairy godmother appeared and granted the cooking pot its wish, as well as some of the other appliances' wishes. But the story doesn't tell us where the real Rhenish Sauerbraten (made from horse meat) that was prepared on Christmas Eve came from. Your ideas are wonderful, Kai! 

John Hurd expressed his intense longing with a song of his own. It is about his long-deceased father, who never spoke about his experiences as a prisoner of war in Japan. They were probably too traumatic. John would have liked to know more about them, but his father kept everything to himself. In the song ‘Jack's Song’, John vividly describes a fictional account of his father to his wife. Similar longings surely lie dormant in many of us. 

Caroline Bernotat and Peter Bachmann are artists we have heard many times at the Folk Club, but not yet as a duo. The two make a successful combination. Perhaps we will get to hear them in this constellation more often. Of the three songs they presented to us, two were penned by Caroline, who also deals with the theme of longing, but in this case for lost love. Caroline sings ‘So Far Away’ with her sensitive voice, accompanied only by Peter's beautiful fingerpicking. ‘Where Are All The Years’ was a duet – a first for Caroline's songs, according to her. ‘Leaving On A Jet Plane’ by John Denver (best known in the interpretation by Peter, Paul and Mary) then invited the audience to sing along – wonderful! Thank you very much for your beautiful contribution. 

As mentioned at the beginning, we welcomed two brilliant musicians from Scotland to this December Folk Club: Simon Kempston, whom most people already know from his numerous appearances at the Folk Club, andr Paul Tasker. Paul has been accompanying Simon on his autumn tour through Germany, Belgium and the Netherlands for several days. The two have been working together for a long time and, among other things, had a series of performances at the Edinburgh Festival last summer. Like Simon, Paul also writes many of his own pieces. Some of them are purely instrumental music – of the finest quality! On their new album ‘Tangled Strings’, Simon and Paul present new melodies and old ones in a new guise in perfect harmony. 

Paul started their performance with one of his own solo pieces: ‘To Decide’ is about indecision. In the end, you are still at the beginning. ‘Wayfaring Stranger’ is a well-known folk song about dying. Sung and played by Paul, it offers completely new impressions. 

‘Tundra Plane’ is an instrumental piece penned by Paul, with Simon providing sensitive guitar accompaniment to Paul's banjo playing. Simon wrote ‘City Of A Thousand Windows’, inspired by a visit to the Albanian city of Berat. ‘What Led You To This’ is a song from Simon's 2024 album (My Dreams Are Theirs), to which Paul contributed the accompaniment. ‘The Resolution Torn Asunder’ is also an (instrumental) piece from an earlier album by Simon (In Gratitude Of Solitude), which Simon and Paul adapted for two instruments. Simon and Paul complement each other perfectly here as well. This also applies to the piece ‘Onwards She Travels’, which comes from Simon's album of the same name. After the break, the concert continued with the pieces ‘Sula's Song’ (lead vocals for Paul's banjo; Paul wrote it for a dog!), ‘So Sad, A Sorrow Not Yet Felt’ (two guitars). ‘Where My Love Belongs’ is a song Simon wrote about his little daughter. ‘Husker's Theme’ was written by Paul and, according to him, is a “crossover” melody that connects the USA with Scotland. ‘Firefly’ is a little waltz. Paul was inspired to write the piece when he once heard the Vienna Philharmonic's New Year's Concert – romantic! Of course, there was a little encore: Simon, accompanied by Paul, played and sang ‘Caledonia’ by Dougie MacLean. The audience loved it, of course – and so did your court reporter. The interpretation of the song would certainly have met Dougie MacLean's standards. Huge applause from the audience for the two of them and many thanks from the Folk Club team to Simon and Paul for their wonderful contribution to the end of the year. 

Yes, dear folks, Simon and Paul's performance was divided into two sets, as usual. For the sake of simplicity, I have put everything into one report. Between the interval and Simon and Paul's second set, there were other things to hear. 

John Harrison started with a short poem by Florence Margaret (Stevie) Smith. It is called ‘Not Waving But Drowning’ and describes in a few lines how misunderstandings can decide between life and death. Well, if you are drowning and your desperate hand signals are interpreted as a friendly wave, it is bitter. But away from gallows humour – the author of the poem suffered from depression throughout her life and describes, in a figurative form, what may be highly personal experiences.

Musically, the programme continued with three songs by and featuring Mario Dompke. ‘Rumpelstilzchen’ is a little allegory about the temptations (money, power, etc.) that plague humanity. Less a temptation than a joy for children in hard times were the bags of sweets dropped from US Air Force transport planes over Berlin during the 1948 Berlin Airlift. Mario dedicated the song of the same name to Gail Halvorsen, the inventor of these little gifts dropped on approach to Tempelhof Airport. Mario addressed less joyful topics in his ‘Lied vom Wegschauen’ (Song of Looking Away). No comment is necessary here.

Rick Fines is a professional folk and blues musician from Canada who lives in Bonn because of his wife (yes, such things do happen) and recently discovered the Folk Club – we feel honoured. This time he came with three songs in his repertoire. He addressed tonight's theme, ‘Big and small temptations’ (which I hadn't mentioned until now), with his song ‘Muskoka Moon’. Muskoka is a lake district north of Toronto. The song is about how he fell in love with his best friend's sister while on holiday at one of the beautiful lakes in Muskoka – pure temptation! ‘Backup From Zero’ is a typical blues song in which the singer laments everything that goes wrong. It even includes the line ‘I woke up this morning’, a real classic in blues lyrics, for which the author should really have to put a euro in the cliché jar. The phrase is so ubiquitous in blues lyrics that a musician's joke asks the question: ‘What's written on a blues musician's gravestone?’ Answer: ‘He did not wake up this morning’ – wonderful! Last but not least, Rick gave us a little seminar on ragtime and his efforts to write a suitable song to convince his future wife to move in with him in the simplicity of his wooden hut at the time. Via the detour of the funny song ‘I Can't Tame Wild Women, But I Can Make Tame Women Wild’ (by Bill Boyd's Cowboy Rumblers), he came to the conclusion of his efforts: ‘Baby I'm Good To Go,’ and apparently sparks flew after that. Thank you very much, Rick, for your wonderful music and your humour.

As if we hadn't had enough highlights to applaud that evening, Alex Paris and his father Gué showed up and delighted us with two songs from their Brazilian homeland. A little reminder: Alex is the drummer in the band Cayu, which also includes John Hay and Eva Henneken, who have performed several times at the Folk Club. ‘Chega de saudade’ (I'm tired of missing you) by Antonio Carlos Jobim (music) and Vinicius de Moraes (lyrics) is a Brazilian classic and, so to speak, the origin of bossa nova. ‘Vai, minha tristeza, e diz a ela que, sem ela, não pode ser’ is the first line – a wonderful declaration of love and an equally wonderful gift to the Folk Club from father and son Paris. ‘Como uma onda’ (Like a Wave) was a hit from the 1980s, written for a film set in the surfing world. His second track is also called ‘Zen-Surfismo’. Thanks to Gué and Alex for their beautiful songs and Brazilian flair. 

That brought the last Folk Club of 2025 to a close, but wait, at the end there was of course the whole room singing a tribute to the patron of the Folk Club, Jock Stewart, ‘a man you don't meet every day’. 

See you again in January 2026, this time, due to scheduling issues, exceptionally on the third Friday: 16 January 2026. We are expectingSteve Crawford, the Scotsman from Aberdeen who lives in Bonn, as our featured artist. As always, let yourself be surprised!