First impressions of FCB # 147 on 07.06.24 with David Blair as featured artist

 Bonn Folk Club is Bonn's premier location for totally acoustic and totally unplugged live music and it is also becoming quite a hotspot for singer-songwriters performing their own music live in front of an extremely attentive listening audience. It's always a great pleasure when David Blair visits us as he did last Friday, for his sixth appearance- His enthusiasm is simply infectious both for his music and for life in general, having three young children at home means he has recently even doubled down on his joie de la vie!  Despite being the first fine weather Friday in a good long time, there was a crowd of 60-70 to enjoy his performance and those of the other musicians playing during the evening. We actually had more singer-songwriters performing live this evening than one could shake a stick at!

Second up on the evening was the three-piece group "Schon viel Schönes making their debut appearance at Bonn folk club with two of their own compositions and one by Fleetwood Mac.

Next up was Wolfgang Schriefer, no stranger at the folk club and a performer in the Rock'N Rollator show who is equally at home reciting his own poems at the folk club as he is on this evening performing and singing a potpourri of songs about love (which gives him access to 90% of ALL songs) which he carefully weaved into the evening's theme of "Starting all over again" by maintaining that in love, one is always starting again at the beginning!

Another regular visitor to the folk club was John Hay, who helped us out with amplification when we played outside during the C-19 restrictions. This time he regaled us with an Annette entitled "Brunnenband" from his own pen, and as everybody knows a water source, a spring, starts new over

 again with each new day.

A former regular at Bonn folk club when he earlier lived in Bonn and worked at the UN, Nick Nutall was visiting in Bonn and dropped by to perform (for the first time both solo and acoustically!) the title song from his recent album "Just Because The Bad Wind Blows", refreshingly about the good possibility, rather than the more usual reluctant pessimistic impossibility, of climate change actually being able to work and succeed! Your word in God's ear Nick!

Another debut performer on the night was Jacob aka Van Demian who we met in the Kater 26 where David Blair had performed the previous evening. Jacob assured me that he was not a citizen of Tasmania, and he performed a stunning Annette, one of his own songs, "If You Would", and he will doubtless be a regular performer again at the folk club in the future.

One of my favourite guitar pickers, blues harp players, and songwriters from North Carolina was the late great blind performer Doc Watson. John Hurd, normally our English scribe at Bonn folk club events writing for 3SongsBonn and stealth photographer extraordinaire swapped his quill for his guitar and gave us a superb rendering of one of Doc Watson's lesser-known songs "Ready For The Times To Get Better", bang on the theme of course and skillfully accompanied by Christoph Thiebes on the Blues Harp, on his second, but not last outing on the evening.

David Blair put a capital "D" into dynamism and enthralled us with a fitting end to the first half of the evening, which had seen at least six original songs from singer-songwriters at the opening of the evening. David took us joyfully and enthusiastically into double figures on this score! We were certainly well blessed indeed on this evening.

After the break the folk duo "Harfenlicht" comprising Uwe Jendricke & Antje ten Hooevel who have been performing at Bonn folk club for many years, way back when we used to meet in Haus Müllestumpe in Graurheindorf on the first Friday of the month. Their double harp instrumentals were, as ever, so soothing and melodic, that if one were ever to take a final one-way journey destined for heaven, their music would be the perfect accompaniment!

Another group making their debut performance this evening at the folk club were "Fliegende Füße" zur Deutsch  "Flying Fetet"! This four-piece ensemble showed their amazing singer-songwriter talent on display this evening, having themselves written two of the three songs that they performed this evening.

"Hofjebräu" comprising Michael Pfeil and Axel Meyer were on their third visit to the Bonn folk club and they are renowned, not for their own songs, as much as, for performing German language songs, predominantly in the Cologne dialect. Their first song "Ärge" by Stefan Stoppok had the rare luxury of stereo Blues harps as Christoph Thiebes joined them on stage, as well as percussive instruments in the form of cajon and high-hat.

David Blair closed off this wonderful folk club evening and he must have been the most tired of all us, as one had the impression that he had been standing up on the stage ALL evening. David played for a full half hour at the end of a wonderful folk club evening and after gifting us with the best of his own songs.

David finally finished up the evening with "What A Wonderful World" a song written by Bob Thiel and David Weiss. but recorded and made a hit by "Satchmo" Louis Armstrong, who famously once said about this wonderful song, "It ain't the world that's so bad but what we're doin' to it. And all I'm saying is, see, what a wonderful world it would be if only we'd give it a chance.”

Which was a very fitting end to a wonderful folk club evening with lots of "food for thought".

Many thanks, once again, to David Blair. and to all the other wonderful musicians who performed during this wonderful evening in a not-always-wonderful world. Twenty individuals were performing in total on this evening, if one counts Jock Stewart, who invariably joins us at the end of the evening, despite it being rather late this time. Among the many old familiar faces, there were also many new ones with three acts performing at the folk club for the first time. It's always nice to see and hear debutants. Time to start gargling as next month in the folk club the theme is "A Cappella" featuring the most wonderful musical instrument of all, the human voice.