I used to be a regular at Sharp’s. Heck, I even wrote about it, when one of the legendary folk club’s legendary performers died.

My friend Anna has been trying to get me to sing there for at least fifteen years, but I was always too shy. No excuse this time: with her up from Glasgow, and me down from Brighton – or possibly the other way around – it was impossible not to drift towards Camden and plot what to sing and how to sing it.

Anna brought her tenor recorder down, and I sent her a few of my tunes (and the chords for them) so she could decide which she liked best. The way Sharp’s works is you usually do two songs, one in the first half and on in the second, and Anna chose Doggerland (a new one!) and Harvest Moon (a less new one).

I was quite nervous doing Doggerland, as I’d never sung it in public before, and still needed my notebook with lyrics balanced on my lap as I played. But we got through ok, as you can hear below.

I was the only person there singing original material, which I felt slightly self-conscious about. What was sad about returning was to see how many of the old regulars were finished off by Covid; what was joyful about returning was to see plenty of young folk, one of whom challenged the singing of a song about stark and gory song about slavery without some kind of context or content warning.

We chatted to this person afterwards to support her in this stance, and we learned about the various new folk clubs with actual young people that have cropped up in London since we both departed.

Anyway. Both songs went down well, and after Harvest Moon Anna told everyone she’d been trying to get me to sing Union Miners for over a decade, and launched into it.

I got up, joined in, and felt some kind of circle reaching completion. [1]

[1] maybe the circle sung about here…