Welcome to Cambridge Folk Club
Intimate roots and acoustic music
Cambridge Folk Club presents Open Stage, Showcase and Guest Nights. Buy your tickets on-line from this website or phone 01638 603986
We are a live music club offering all styles of acoustic and folk music. We support local and national artists in a friendly and welcoming atmosphere. Before the coronavirus lockdown, we used to meet every Friday night at 8.00pm in the upstairs function room at The Golden Hind, Milton Road, Cambridge, CB4 1SP. This easily accessible pub offers a wide selection of draught lagers, beers and ciders, and a great range of pub food, and there's parking too. When the lockdown finishes, come along to enjoy creative, talented and original performances.
During the lockdown, we are now hosting Virtual Concerts.See the details below.
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This week we continue our Friday Virtual Concerts, using Zoom.
Friday 7th August: Virtual Open Stage with special guests Kaszak and Afifi
8pm (Meeting opens at 7:45pm)
Running order:
8:00pm The Threebys
8:10pm Art Grossman
8:20pm Isle 'ave a Shanty
8:30pm Karl Hunter
8:40pm John and Di Cullen
8:50pm Cindy Stratton
9:00pm Vic Leonard
9:10pm Katie Harris
9:20pm Gary Woolley
9:40pm Kaszak and Afifi
Martin Kaszak and Faradena Afifi are a duo performing a rich variety of acoustic music and original material from Folk to Country Blues and more modern songs . Martin is known for his warm vocals and finger-picking guitar and Faradena is a talented singer and musician providing beautiful close harmonies and playing viola and cello. Their first official performance was supporting John Renbourn and Wizz Jones and Martin and Fara’s performance attracted much praise and attention from these Folk/Blues legends. Their first album ‘The Bakers Son’ is out now.
http://www.martinkaszak.com/kaszak-and-afifi
https://www.facebook.com/Kaszak-Afifi-583900021769061/
The Threebys
The Threebys - Judy (vocals), Pat (vocals) and Marion (piano) - enjoy selecting, arranging and performing material from the English folk tradition, with Marion’s sensitive accompaniments complementing Pat and Judy’s mellifluous harmonies.
Art Grossman
Art Grossman is a Boston, Massachusetts area folksinger. Growing up in the late 50’s and 60’s, he was greatly influenced by the folk music revolution. He was attracted to the simplicity of these performers using only their voices and acoustic guitars to tell their collective stories through their songs. Among his favourites are Bob Dylan, Joan Baez, Gordon Lightfoot, Joni Mitchell, Don McLean, Simon and Garfunkel, John Denver and Tom Paxton. He also admired artists of the 50s like the Everly Brothers and the Kingston trio as well as lesser known local talents such as Bill Staines and David Mallett.
He says, “I want to play at places I have never played at before. The Cambridge Folk Club would certainly qualify!”
https://www.facebook.com/nrcoffeehouse/
Isle 'ave a Shanty
Elliott Spray, Andrew Newton, Lee Harvey, Stuart Green, Tony Calladine and Kevin King are the six members of this male harmony group based on the Isle of Ely. Singing a capella, they specialise in traditional songs from the sea and the country, and have been known to mention grog, noggins, or a drop of Nelson’s blood!
Tonight, they will be bringing you their own fenland waterways shanty, Fisherman of Ely, and will also be expecting you to join in the actions on their song ‘Sailor Ain’t a Sailor’, once Stuart has taken you through them.
Karl Hunter
Karl is a life-long folk fan who has been songwriting and performing in earnest since 2002. His songs and stories affectionately make fun of 'the tradition' and lead the listener down some of its stranger paths. Karl's material is largely populated by gentle, odd people, such as clumsy jugglers and naïve pirates, so suspend your disbelief and embrace the ridiculous!
John and Di Cullen
John and Di Cullen have been described as “an inspirational music partnership” performing contemporary and traditional folk material. They are part of the four-piece band Four Gone Confusion who play in the Sussex and Kent Area.
https://www.facebook.com/johndicullen/
Cindy Stratton
A founder member of the fabulous Bristol-based all-female a capella group The Sweet Soul Sisters, singer/songwriter Cindy’s contemporary acoustic music has powerful, haunting melodies, and tells compelling, reflective stories of life and love. She has released three albums, ‘Only You‘ (1994), ‘Missing Pieces‘ (2004) and ‘Portraits of Life and Love’ (2010).
‘Lovingly produced examples of Cindy’s exceptional song writing, conveyed by her airy and exquisitely controlled voice’ - Bath Chronicle.
https://cindystratton.wordpress.com/
Vic Lennard
Vic was due to play a 30-minute guest spot at our September Open Stage and we all know what happened to that! He is a very accomplished singer-songwriter who has spent the past forty years playing live and recording. He is lead guitarist in the excellent 5-piece Lateisha Maria Band.
Katie Harris
Katie made her folk singing debut at an early age, influenced by the songs of Joni Mitchell, The Spinners, Ralph McTell and James Taylor. Accompanying herself on piano, piano accordion, shruti box and whistles, she performs gentle, new arrangements of traditional songs alongside raw and exposed original compositions, drawing attention to historic stories with a smattering of social justice.
'Musicianship at its finest! Harmonies, layers, spirit and energy. Bringing traditional folk styles into contemporary settings and giving them new life...well worth going and checking out!' - Acoustic ANJ.
https://www.katiegraceharris.com/
Gary Woolley
Gary is one half of local acoustic duo Kelly and Woolley. He has been playing and writing songs since the age of 14 and is strongly influenced by the Americana tradition, although he always has an ear for a good song, wherever it comes from. Kelly and Woolley’s latest CD, “Miner’s Eyes” (2018), included 8 of Gary's songs and was well received in America, Canada, Ireland and the UK. The songs are never quite the same without Matt's wonderful playing.
http://www.kellyandwoolley.co.uk/
Anyone who would like to be in the audience is welcome. Joining instructions will be emailed to performers and those on the Cambridge Folk Club mailing list. If you would like to be in the Zoom audience and are not on our mailing list, please email enquiries@cambridgefolkclub.co.uk
The Virtual Open Stage will also be streamed live on the Cambridge Folk Club Facebook page from 8pm as an alternative to Zoom.
If you would like to perform at a future Virtual Open Stage, please contact us via our Facebook page or at enquiries@cambridgefolkclub.co.uk
PLEASE NOTE that we are going to have a holiday for the next two weeks so the next Virtual Showcase will be on 28th August.
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Become a Member of the Cambridge Folk Club
You are welcome to show your support for the Cambridge Folk Club by becoming a member for just £15 per year. If you choose to become a member, your year's membership will run from when we return to the Golden Hind.
You can buy a year's membership here.
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Read about how the Cambridge Folk Club Virtual Concerts have been organised during lockdown
Marion, Robin and Calvin from the Cambridge Folk Club Team have written in the latest issue of the Unicorn Magazine about organising our series of virtual concerts.
Unicorn Magazine Issue 151 (July, August & September 2020) is out now!!
Issue 151 of Unicorn Magazine is now available. Because of the coronavirus, this special bumper edition is ‘online-only’ (there’s no way to distribute the paper copies). To read the magazine online, or you can download it and print it out for yourself, please go to the website www.unicornmagazine.org and access the magazine from the Home page. Look for the magazine cover with the red banner saying 'Keep Safe and Carry On Supporting'.
The magazine is packed full of articles and information about music, dance and festivals – we hope you enjoy reading it and sharing the link with friends. And why not sign up to the Unicorn blog here – it’s a great way to keep up to date with what’s happening in the folk world, and you can unsubscribe at any time.
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Cambridge Folk Club evenings at the Golden Hind closed due to Coronavirus lockdown.
The Cambridge Folk Club evenings at the Golden Hind are closed until further notice because of the coronavirus COVID-19 restrictions.
Some of you may have read that there will be a return to indoor concerts. The Government document https://www.gov.uk/guidance/working-safely-during-coronavirus-covid-19/performing-arts mentions a Five Stage plan, and we are now at Stage Three. Stage Five says some indoor concerts may be possible in October, after pilot concerts have taken place. The Government document applies to professional musicians. It stipulates social distancing, marked out areas, a one way system, monitoring of 'pinch points', use of sanitiser and deep cleaning of the premises and equipment after each concert.
Unfortunately, with social distancing, we cannot accommodate enough people in our function room to make concerts with professional musicians financially viable at the moment.
In addition, the Government guidance for non-professional musicians playing indoors asks that they and their audience should keep to the guidelines on "meeting people outside your household". These say that people should "socially distance from those they do not live with, and interactions should be limited to no more than two households". Sadly, this also makes it impossible to arrange Open Stage/Showcase nights with our local non-professional musicians.
We are all looking forward to resuming face to face live music, but with this guidance in mind, this doesn't look possible for a while yet. So, for the moment, we will be continuing with our Zoom sessions. We will, of course, keep monitoring the Government guidance and keep you updated about when the live concerts will reopen via our website and our mail out.
We are hoping to re-book the artists who were scheduled to appear at the Club at a later date.
Some of the artists who were going to perform at the Golden Hind are now appearing on our Virtual Concerts.
In these difficult times, we at Cambridge Folk Club are asking you to support the musicians who won’t be able to play for us while the Club is closed, by buying their CDs and other merchandise. This would go some way towards replacing their lost income, and would also show that we’re thinking of them.
Stay safe and healthy, and enjoy listening to the music we all love so much.
With best wishes from all of us at Cambridge Folk Club.