Hove Folk Club

REG MEUROSS : Friday 3rd October 2008.
Report by Robert Rankin.

On Friday last it was my pleasure to host the monthly folk night at The Eclipse, Montgomery St Hove, the brainchild of the now legendary Robb Johnson. Ah, a proper folk club, upstairs in a pub, with no sound checks because they don't have a PA, amps or speakers.

I wore one of my smart suits, but they still put up with me, nice people. You can get about fifty folk folk in that upstairs room, they like a sing-along and they like to listen. Which must be pretty nice for the performers. I sang some silly songs and strummed the one note I know on my Flying V ukelele, and they clapped. Result.

First up (well I say up, there isn't a stage, this proper folk) was Ian who runs the other folk club, well one of them at least, in my local at Preston Park, The Crown and Anchor, Wednesdays and Sundays. He knocked out a couple of decent unaccompanied numbers, in the old style and got things off to a great start.

Robb did what he always does and entertained the crowd with his witty, erudite and just plain wonderful brand of music. "Riding on the London Eye" a"Cockney classic" was obviously well known to the crowd who sang along.

And then came the first set from Reg Meuross. If you're a lover of folk and you've never heard Reg, then I must ask you, "Where have you been?"- the man seems to have played everywhere and is constantly invited to play at folk festivals throughout the world. So he was probably thrilled to get to play a proper folk club in Hove. Damn tooting. Reg has a haunting voice and writes some pretty haunting songs (Mike Harding from the radio is a big fan) and the ladies love him. He sang material from his new album Dragonfly, which included "Jesus Wept", a moving song about the First World War that had a few damp eyes (mine included because i'm a real wuss for that kind of thing).

The Eclipse serves extremely good beer (Harveys), and I would recommend the "Old" (reasonably potent), and so by the second half of the show I was much noisier than the first. One thing I particularly love about folk clubs is that you will get interesting people turning up out of the blue and offering to sing a song. Agreed somethimes they are nutters, but then that has a certain entertaining quality, doesn't it? No, well it does for me.

So at the beginning of the second half a lady called Jesna offerred to sing (and I'm the compere so I'm in charge). "Up you get and do your stuff," said I. And it was one of those magical moments. She was from Dalmatia, she sang a song about Mother Teresa, time stood still and the hairs rose on the back of my neck. She sung a song in hermother tongue and the Hove crowd joined in the choruses.

Frankly the evening would have been worth that alone, but we had more from Robb to follow and them a most triumphant second session from Reg that ran over time much to the joy of the adoring ladies (and I guess the jealous admiring men).

Yes folk, there were stars out last Friday night and they were shining upstairs at The Eclipse, Montgomery Street, Hove. And there will be more on the first Friday of next month. And Robb has agreed that I can compere again at the next one (it seems that I passed the audition, it must have been the suit) so I'll be working up perhaps one more chord on the Flying V and looking forward to getting moved good and proper once again.

Absolutely splendid stuff. See you there.

Web site: www.regmeuross.com/dragonfly.php
MySpace: www.myspace.com/regmeuross

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