Category Archives: Event

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.

Pete Morton on Friday 20 July

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Pete Morton is one of the finest original songwriters on the folk scene. Perhaps best known for one of his earliest songs ‘Another Train’, Pete is constantly producing new material, sharing his unique view of our place in a changing world.

Pete’s most recent CD, ‘The Game of Life’, is a compilation of his most popular tracks, performed with the band Full House, and includes both up-tempo and serious songs, including ‘Seven Billion Eccentrics’, ‘The Shepherd’s Song’, and ‘The Luckiest Man’, as well as ‘Disobedience’ and ‘Shores of Italy’, written in 2003 but still sadly topical.

Tickets £11 (£8 members) can be reserved by emailing contact[at]norwichfolkclub[dot]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.

John Conolly on Friday 8 June

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Lincolnshire singer-songwriter John Conolly is a long-established member of the folk community. John originally found his way into folk music through the skiffle route, but is best known for what many think is a traditional song, ‘Fiddler’s Green’, performed here with Dave Fletcher and Bill Whaley. John’s other well known songs include “Punch and Judy Man“.

“If there were ever a Campaign for Real Folk-Singers, John Conolly would be the sort of act it would promote – his well-crafted songs sit well with his easy-going charm and sense of humour, making him a firm favourite with both audiences and fellow-musicians.” (Topic Folk Club, Bradford)

Tickets ( £7 members, £10 non-members) can be reserved by emailing: contact [at] norwichfolkclub [dot] net. Bring your own drinks. Teas and coffee available in the kitchen.

Chris Sherburn and Denny Bartley with Emily Sanders on Friday 27 April

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Chris Sherburn and Denny Bartley have been bringing their unique sound to audiences across Europe and America since the early 1990s, when a chance meeting at a music session created one of folk music’s most enduring partnerships. The duo were founder members of the band Last Night’s Fun, which achieved international fame.

Chris (concertina) grew up surrounded by folk music of all kinds – his home was a regular haunt for passing folk singers and musicians. Denny (guitar and vocals), born in Co. Limerick, is drawn to the inheritance of age-old slides, slow airs, slip jigs and wild reels. The duo are joined by wonderful fiddle-player and singer Emily Sanders.

Let us know if you are planning to come along via the email on our contact page. Tickets £11 (£8 members) can be reserved and paid for on the door. Bring your own drinks. Teas and coffee are available in the kitchen (50p). Some parking is available immediately outside the Christ Church Centre – please double park to help us get more cars in!

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.

Jackie Oates duo on Friday 16 February

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Since appearing as a finalist in the BBC Radio 2 Young Folk Awards 2003, singer and fiddle-player Jackie Oates has performed extensively at festivals and venues across the country and beyond, in a solo capacity and with her band. A founder member of Northumbrian group and Mercury nominated Rachel Unthank and the Winterset, Jackie is now a permanent member of the folk super-group The Imagined Village, as well as touring in her own right.

Jackie has several albums, including ‘The Spy Glass and the Herringbone‘, which contains lesser known but life-affirming songs from the English tradition and was released in 2015. In researching her 2013 album, ‘Lullabies’, Jackie invited submissions over the internet and the collected songs are housed at the Vaughan Williams Memorial Library at Cecil Sharp House in London, home of the English Folk Dance and Song Society. Poor Robin

Tickets £11 (£8 members). Reserve by emailing via the contact page. Bring your own drinks. Teas and coffee available in the kitchen. Please double park to allow as many cars in the carpark as possible.

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.