East Dulwich Jug Band

I went down to the Plough in Lordship Lane last Wednesday for the second of the monthly East Dulwich Jug Band 'Plough Sessions'. The premise is to have an open access night on the first Wednesday of every month with everyone invited to come along to write, record and perform a song on the same night (all acoustic instruments welcome except guitars). After a year there will be a whole album of new songs and it will be time to think of a new project. So far the songs have had a local theme. The first session wrote a song about Spring Heeled Jack, a Victorian phenomenon of sightings of a man/creature able to jump over walls and scare the hell out of the residents of South London and other places.

2nd Plough Session


Last week's song theme was Peckham Rye, and the final song included lines that alluded to William Blake, Only Fools & Horses, Harriet Harman's recent Peckham walkabout and the supposed UFO sightings last year - the chorus was 'It's a long way from Rye Lane, to the Stars and back again'. All performed by a 31-piece band featuring most of Dulwich Ukulele Club, three fiddles, percussion, kazoo, banjo, mandolin (that was me), slide guitar and various singers. There was a jug but nobody seemed to know how to play it, so there's definitely an opening there for the next session on May 7th at 8 pm! By the way, they are performing as the South Bank Jug Band at the Festival Hall this Wednesday at 11 am.

All of this is adding nicely to that great body of South London Songs.