Our Monthly Meeting on Wednesday 28 May 2025 featured singer and songwriter Elaine Samuels who appeared without her backing group Kindred Spirit. Elaine has been performing her own songs in clubs, at festivals (including Glastonbury) and even on television since the early 1990s. She progressed from only playing solo to performing in other line-ups, and has played the famous Cavern Club in Liverpool. She performed her haunting and beautiful vocals with her acoustic guitar accompaniment . As well as a performer, she is also involved in encouraging songwriting and song performing competitions. She is well known for her chatty, friendly personality.
With the music from six studio albums, and many live albums too, she had a wide range of work from which to choose.
We started with a Joni Mitchell song entitled “Woodstock”, a song about feeling free. For many of our members this feeling only occurs when they can head off for a holiday! We then had “Tomorrow’s Child” by Gerry Power, an ecological song which asks how will we explain ourselves to tomorrow’s child if all that we leave is a wasteland. We then had one of Elaine’s own compositions, “Children of the Stars” which can be viewed on YouTube at this location.
For a change of pace, Elaine then performed the Sally Smithson song “Bladders in the Night” which drew roars of laughter from our members – especially in the second verse! From night time perambulations we moved to the serious topic of miners in the USA who spent nearly all their time underground in the dark, as epitomised by Billy Edd Wheeler in “High Flying Bird”. From a high flying bird we moved on to racing pigeons and the “King of Rome”, a song by Dave Sudbury immortalising the famous bird’s adventures on a race home from Italy.
From that adventure, we turned to Tom Lehrer who had written a song about “Poisoning Pigeons in the Park”. While not politically correct, the lyrics were very funny. We then moved on to more serious forms of poison with “England’s Glory”, a song by John Prosser about the working conditions at the Bryant and May Match Factory in London at the time of the Matchgirl Strike in 1888. We then had a song by Elaine “You just have to believe”, which dealt with the influences a family had had on a girl growing up in Folkestone. We then moved on to “All About the Money” which can be seen on YouTube at this location.
We finished on a lighter note with a song by Bessie Smith entitled “Mean Bed Bug Blues”. This was a most enjoyable session, and there were many questions from the floor at the end. Our next Monthly Meeting will be our AGM on Wednesday 25 June 2025 starting at 11:30am.