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.
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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.
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‘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 expecting Steve Crawford, the Scotsman from Aberdeen who lives in Bonn, as our featured
artist. As always, let yourself be surprised!
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