First Impressions of FCB # 171 on Friday 04.09.26 with photos from Elena Giovio

 A wonderful folky first Friday evening after the summer break, reminding us just how fortunate we all are. Juhana Iivonen was our featured artist for the third time and delighted us with a well balanced evening featuring his own inimitable take on self-penned music being more than a match for whatever circumstance life could throw at Juhana.

We are normally most fortunate at Bonn Folk Club in having such excellent photographers on the FCB committee. However, on this particular evening there was a veritable dearth of said talent for the first folk evening after the summer break. Sabine Büttner had vorwarned us of her absence and ace photographer John Hurd was testing his new plastic poncho during the downpour to celebrate the celebration of the "Bad" in Bad Godesberg, recognising it as a century old spa town, (perhaps I should not have sung "The Green Man" and tempted fate on the said evening?) and even Detlef Stachetzki was attending an essential choir practise. 

Unexpectedly, and luckily, for us all, dear Elena Giovio, who does so much undercover work for everyone's benefit at Folk Club Bonn cheerfully stepped up to the plate on the evening and took the following photographs. Even after 171 events the folk club never ceases to amaze in its ability to flourish, when one is least exoecting it.  Thanks so much Elena for everything that you do!

John Harrison, breaking into a sweat wrestling with the conundrum of W.C. Hand's "Loveless Love"

                            Mario & Corinna followed with some wonderful German folk songs:

                          and Mario really did bring along a different instrument for each song, 

                                                      and I thought he was merely joking:

                                   Andreas Kulik regaled us with his dulcet tones sing in Polish 

                                                and some fime narmonica accompanyment:

Jochen Hiester was performing two of his self-penned songs on the piano, and being a feeling and thinking performer, he took some minor criticism of his last performance where the piano was a little too overpowering for his vocals, and solved the problem with ease and the help of a velvet blanket                           muffling the sound of the keys in the piano. Bravo Jochen! Job well done! 

                                          A super mixture of Bertold Brecht and Music Hall

Juhana Iivonen was next up before the break and never ceases to amaze me just how much feeling he can induce into his songs with so little aparant phyical effort,  almost as if his songs are performing                                                              him, rather than the other way around:

                       Juhana is always good for a surprise and invited me to play harp on this one:

            After the break Canadian Rick Fines gave us some old fashioned Blues from 

   Sonny Terry and Brownie McGhee, admirably performed on a guitar which was not too unfamiliar:

  

Since the Waldzither evening at the folk club Rick was beguiled by this traditional German instrumet and following Mario's advice he purchased one such online. He noticed that his was identical to 

             Mario's instrument and promptly borrowed Mario's instrument as if to casually emphasize, 

                                          that there is seemingly no end to this man's talents! 

Sometimes the folk club seems to write its very own folklore, and on this evening Juhana had invited an old friend of his, they had actually grown up together many years ago on the same street in Helsinki only 100 metres apart and Juhana had somehow lost contact with Timo, and this was no surprise as Timo spent most of his life in South America. Recently, however,  Juhana played a gig in an Irish pub in Leverkusen and Timo attended and they reacquainted their childhood friendship. Juhana told Timo that he was playing at the Bonn Folk Club soon and suggested that Timo should come down from Krefeld, where he now lives, and bring his nylon strung guitar with him. 

                               This Timo duly did and performed two wonderful instrumental

                                             South American guitar pieces for us:

This certainly made eeryone's evening and Elena's in particular, as she eminates from South America                            and was visibly emotionally touched by Timo's performance on the guitar. 

                  This fact alone probably inspired her wonderful photography on the evening!

              For the rest of the evening Juhana continued to show us what tranquility and bliss,                                                                   not only looked like, blended together, but also sounded like:

Juhana played several new songs from his upcoming CD of which he is rightfully well proud and 

                    which has been four years in the making and is due out next month, so please do 

                        yourselves a favour and partake in this, it will have been well worth the wait: 

     (Please remember there are less than four months of shopping time now left prior to Christmas!:-)

Thanks to Juhana for such a fine evening and thanks to all the participants who make the first Friday acoustic unplugged folk club the wonderful unique cultural entity it most certainly is. A special thanks to Elena for orchestrating so many such fine evenings and this month even showcasing her hitherto                                              unknown impressive photographic skills!

The evening, despite having many unforseen wonderful surprises actually finished remarkably                             punctually, despite Detlef's absence, and there was even time to sing Jock Stewart 

                                     and look forward to the weekend and the new week: