Tag Archives: Traditional and contemporary songs

The Teacups Trio on Friday 5 July

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Returning to Norwich Folk Club on Friday 5 July we welcome The Teacups Trio, a fantastic young harmony group who we last saw in June 2015. As you may already know, The Teacups formed as a foursome while studying at Newcastle and offer unadorned, gutsy singing of traditional and contemporary material. Not to be missed!

Tickets £11 (£8 club members), can be reserved by emailing via the form on our contact page. Bring your own drinks. Teas and coffees available in the kitchen.

In the meantime, the showcase guest at the song session on Friday 21 June is the popular local singer, melodeon player and guitarist Roger Gamble. A veteran of the folk and acoustic scene for over fifty years, Roger helped set up the first Norwich Folk Clubs at the Unthank Arms and the York Tavern and still regularly performs at sessions and clubs in Norfolk and Suffolk. Over the years Roger has happily absorbed influences from Dylan to Knopfler, from the Blues to the West Coast, but Norfolk song and humour are always likely to break through. This is a free session. Bring songs and tunes as well as your own drinks.

Ninebarrow on Friday 16 November

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Ninebarrow are a multi-award-winning folk duo who are impressing audiences across the country with their innovative and captivating take on the folk tradition. Described by Mark Radcliffe as sounding ‘like two halves of one voice’ and by Kate Rusby as ‘absolutely amazing’, Jon Whitley and Jay LaBouchardiere combine breath-taking vocal harmonies and melodies, delivering original songs that are inspired and rooted in the landscape and history of the British Isles. As well as crafting unique and engaging original material, Ninebarrow also take a wide-range of traditional folk songs and rework them in their own distinctive way, accompanied by tenor and octave mandolas, ukulele, two reed organs and piano.

In 2017, the duo were nominated at the BBC Radio 2 Folk Awards in the ’Horizon’ category for ‘Best Emerging Artist’. One of the highest accolades in their genre, it was made even more exceptional because it was only a few months prior to this that Jon and Jay relinquished their jobs as a teacher and GP in favour of a full-time music career. Farewell Shanty

Tickets £11 (members £8) can be reserved via the email box on our contact page. Pay on the door. Bring your own drinks. Teas and coffee available in the kitchen (50p).

Ewan McLennan on Friday 21 September

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Ewan McLennan has come to be known as a guitarist at the very forefront of his generation; a troubadour, balladeer and storyteller cut in the old style; a singer that can move audiences with his passion and pathos; and a songwriter for whom social justice is still a burning issue.

From a BBC Horizon Award to his performances on the acclaimed Transatlantic Sessions, recent years have been marked by numerous awards and accolades for his music.

Ewan’s most recent project entitled Breaking the Spell of Loneliness – a collaboration with renowned author and journalist George Monbiot – seeks to use music and word to open up the issue of loneliness. Their UK tour and concept album have received wide acclaim and been featured widely, including live appearances on BBC Two’s Newsnight, BBC Radio 4’s Front Row and BBC Radio 3’s In Tune. New video, just released: Shelter from the Storm

Tickets £11 (members £8) can be reserved by emailing contact@norwichfolkclub.net. Bring your own drinks. Teas and coffee available in the kitchen.

Sam Kelly and Jamie Francis on Friday 22 June

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Sam Kelly is a BBC Radio 2 Folk Award winning Bristol-based singer, song-writer, producer and multi-instrumentalist. Coming from a family largely made up of Norfolk dairy farmers has left Sam Kelly with an unmatched experience of singing in front of hurtfully disinterested Friesians, and his meandering musical journey has ranged from reaching the final of ITV’s Britain’s Got Talent as a teenager, to being selected for the first ever EFDSS Artist Development Scheme.

Sam was nominated in the Best Singer category at the 2015 Spiral Earth Awards and won the BBC Radio 2 Horizon Award in 2016. Sam Kelly and The Lost Boys were nominated for the Best Band category in 2018. Sam will perform at the club with Lost Boys band member and talented banjo player Jamie Francis, whose playing has been described as ‘fantastic’ (Mike Harding) and ‘exemplary’ (Folk Radio). Golden Vanity

Tickets £13 (£10 for club members) can be reserved by emailing via our contact form or to contact{at}norwichfolkclub[dot]net Bring your own drinks. Teas and coffees available in the kitchen.

Showcase with Jaki Alden and Pete Wilks on Friday 25 May

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On Friday 25 May we welcome well known local performers Jaki Alden and Pete Wilks as showcase guests at the song session. Jaki (cello and flute) and Pete (fiddle, banjo, guitar) are accomplished instrumentalists and singers, with an eclectic mix of acoustic songs and tunes, some ancient and some modern. Look forward to an evening of mellow sounds.

Entry is free, with a raffle, and all are welcome to come along to the session, whether to sing, play or listen. Bring songs and tunes, and your own drinks. Teas and coffee are available in the kitchen.

Tony Hall on Friday 16 March

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We look forward very much to welcoming local celebrity, melodeon player and modest wit Tony Hall back to the Folk Club on Friday 16 March. Summed up by Islington Folk Club as: ‘East Anglian melodeon player with a distinctive, quintessentially English style, who played on the iconic ’80s Nic Jones release Penguin Eggs. Hall’s sets are laid-back affairs, interspersed with his dry, sometimes gently surreal humour.’

Please let us know if you would like us to save tickets £9 (£6 members), via the email on the contact page. Bring your own drinks. Teas and coffee available in the kitchen.

The Norwich Folk Club AGM, which was postponed from 23 February due to illness, will now be held on Friday 23 March at 8 pm, to be followed by a song session, open to all, from around 9 pm.

The Shackleton Trio on Friday 19 January

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The guests on Friday 19 January will be the Shackleton Trio, a lively local band featuring fiddle-player and songwriter Georgia Shackleton, supported by guitarist Aaren Bennett and mandolin player Nic Zuppardi. Georgia writes and performs ‘wordy songs about other people’, instrumentally influenced by British, American and Scandinavian folk traditions, with a regional twist.

The Trio have toured the UK, Belgium and the Netherlands, and have performed at Cambridge Folk Festival and Folk East, Towersey and Broadstairs Folk Week, as well as folk clubs across the UK.

Tickets £11 (£8 club members) can be reserved via our contact page. Bring your own drinks. Teas and coffee available in the kitchen.

The club’s Christmas Party will be on Friday 22 December. All welcome. Bring your own drinks and perhaps some food to share.  Seasonal songs, tunes and a grand raffle.

Norwich Folk Club will also meet on Friday 29 December this year.

Martyn Wyndham Read and Iris Bishop on 1 December

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Martyn Wyndham-Read has been involved with folk music for over 40 years. In his late teens he left his mother’s farm in Sussex and headed off, with his guitar, to Australia where he worked on a sheep station in South Australia. It was while he was there that he heard, first hand, the old songs sung by some of the station hands at Emu Springs and he became captivated by these songs and the need to know more of them and where they came from grew.

Martyn headed off to Melbourne and became part of the folk song revival there and throughout Australia during the early1960s. Based back in the UK, he has toured worldwide, performing a variety of traditional and contemporary songs. Martyn is accompanied by box player Iris Bishop.

Tickets £11 (£8 club members) can be reserved via the email link on our contacts page. Bring your own drinks. Coffee and teas available in the kitchen.

Said the Maiden on Friday 10 November

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Photo by Elly Lucas www.ellylucas.co.uk

Award winning trio Said The Maiden are Jess Distill, Hannah Elizabeth and Kathy Pilkinton, three friends who discovered a mutual love of folk music when they reunited several years after spending their school years together in Hertfordshire. After tentatively performing a few songs at their local Redbourn Folk Club, the group soon gained a great deal of interest on the local and national folk circuit, securing major support and headline slots at folk clubs and festivals around the country.

Said the Maiden have also opened for many great artists including The Full English, The Fisherman’s Friends, Jim Moray, Megson, Martin Carthy, Clannad, Cara Dillon, False Lights and Fairport Convention. They were also honoured to join legendary fiddler the late Dave Swarbrick on a successful UK solo tour in the spring of 2014, and released their debut album ‘A Curious Tale’ in June of the same year. In 2016, the group went on to release their EP ‘Of Maids And Mariners’, which was met with critical acclaim across the folk community and in 2017 the trio won the Folking Awards ‘Rising Star’ prize.

“Rising doyennes of the folk scene … I can hear why Said The Maiden have already made themselves a healthy reputation, and I can also sense a strong measure of untapped potential.” (David Kidman, FATEA Magazine)

Tickets £11 (£8 club members) can be reserved by emailing us via the form on the contact page. Bring your own drinks. Teas and coffee available in the kitchen.

On Friday 27 October the song session theme will be Halloween. Tenuous connections to the theme are equally welcome.

The James Brothers on Friday 13 October

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Photo: Elly Lucas

The James Brothers come from the lands down under – Australia and New Zealand to be precise; lands in which the traditional songs and tunes of the British Isles have evolved their own unique characteristics. And it’s these songs and tunes, and several of their own making, that The James Brothers have united to play.

Sydney-born James Fagan is best known as one half of Nancy Kerr & James Fagan (musically and maritally), but also spotted playing guitar and bouzouki in The Cara Dillon Band, the live circus that is Bellowhead and with his parents and sister as The Fagans, where his folk career began.

Jamie McClennan is a Kiwi who found himself in a duo with Scotland’s BBC-award-winning Emily Smith (whom he also married) having chosen not to follow his first bandmates to Ireland, where they formed the much celebrated Gráda.Jamie has been sighted on fiddle, whistle and guitar next to the likes of Sharon Shannon, Beth Nielson Chapman, Jerry Douglas and his mum.

Tickets £11 (£8 club members) can be reserved by emailing via our contact page. Bring your own drinks – teas and coffee available in the kitchen.