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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Friday 5th March: Virtual Open Stage with special guest Nick Barraclough
8pm (Meeting opens at 7:45pm)
Appearing this evening:
8:00pm Andrea Martelloni
8:10pm Pat Crilly
8:20pm Sarah Louise Boyle
8:30pm Vic Leonard
8:40pm Elie Rees
8:50pm Peter Lehndorff
9:00pm Alison Benson
9:10pm Bernie Kedge
9:20pm Giullia Milanto
9:30pm Nick Barraclough
Andrea Martelloni
Virgult is Italian guitar player Andrea Martelloni's solo acoustic persona. Born in Milan 31 years ago, Andrea was captivated by the English music tradition from a very young age, and moved to England at 23. A freelance jazz player, he is one half of the Mediterranean jazz duo Sloth In The City, with partner Betty Accorsi. His EP ‘Somebody's Solo’ (2011) explored the singer/songwriter delivery on top of fingerstyle guitar. Andrea’s latest album ‘Thoughts and Memories’ (2020) continues to experiment with rich arrangements, unusual techniques and flamboyant performances with the guitar doing funk, folk, jazz, rock, sludge, the horns, the bass and the drums.
https://www.facebook.com/virgult/
https://virgult.bandcamp.com/album/thoughts-and-memories
Pat Crilly
Pat Crilly was born in Ireland, raised in Scotland, spent 12 years in Norway and is now living in England. His songs are about the places he has been and the folks he has met in his life, from Cork to the Congo and Norway to Nova Scotia. His guitar tunings are mostly DADGAD, and he is also a member of the band One Man Down who play juggy, bluesy folk. He loves performing and songwriting.
https://www.facebook.com/Pat-Crilly-Music-1251270128221282/
Sarah Louise Boyle
Sarah Louise Boyle is a Scottish folk singer/ songwriter from Inverness, who is now based in North Yorkshire. She studied Music at British and Irish Modern Music Institute. Studied Musicality at Northbrook Metropolitan College. Her sets comprise of re-workings of traditional songs from The British Isles and her original material, inspired by happenings in life and from stories.
https://www.facebook.com/sarahlouise.boyle
Vic Leonard
Vic has managed to make a career from the odd combination of music, maths and journalism. Handling most musical styles from folk to funk and heavy rock, he's spent the past 40 years playing live and recording. His current projects include The Latiesha Maria Band, Let's Funk and The Friday Night Rock Service.
Elie Rees
Acoustic folk singer/guitarist Elie’s raw and emotive songwriting combines a rare fragility and strength. Drawing on her background in folk music, her narrative lyrics of hurt and resolution are complemented by acoustic guitar accompaniments which are sometimes sparse, sometimes more percussive. Her latest album Gold Dirt (2019) reached no 7 in the i-tunes singer/songwriter charts.
Peter Lehndorff
Peter writes folk and jazz songs about everyday life, some of which are humorous observations about everyday life in a small town and in Massachusetts. In addition to his slice of life songs, Peter is now mixing the funny with the serious and the romantic with the eccentric. Some new songs reflect his experiences as a caregiver for his late wife. He has opened for Tom Paxton and Arlo Guthrie, was a winner in the 2020 Connecticut Folk Festival Songwriting competition, and a finalist in the Boston Acoustic underground competition.
Alison Benson
Alison Benson writes songs that are often based around stories, some true, some imagined, in a folk style. A singer songwriter from Liverpool whose musical style is rooted in folk, Alison grew up playing the guitar and singing, but a few years ago she fell hook, line and sinker for the ukulele, an often derided, but beautiful little instrument which she uses to bring a different sound to acoustic music. She is inspired by the wonderful music of Simon and Garfunkel, with a love of the Beatles thrown in for good measure, and is a big fan of Megson.
A year ago, a week into the first lockdown, she released her debut EP ‘Paths & Stories,’ a collection of five of her songs. You’ll find it on all major platforms including spotify: https://open.spotify.com/artist/61t3r35avXILZeCPF1xvM3?si=in0cEOjDSi2nOF6BVXsLWw
https://www.facebook.com/alisonbensonuke/
Bernie Kedge
Bernie is probably best known as one of the organisers of the now defunct, Mayflower Folk Club, and annually, as part of the management team, in the Club Tent, at the Cambridge Folk Festival. He is a powerful unaccompanied singer, of mostly traditional songs. Recently he has taken to writing poetry, and tonight, he will be reciting one he wrote during the first lock-down! He has a live album 'Wish I Was A Rock', recorded in 2017 at The Black Fen Folk Club, although this is currently unavailable, unless, as he says, "there is enough interest to print more!" In which case, he can be contacted at berniekedge@ntlworld.com
Giulia Millanta
Giulia Millanta is an Italian singer-songwriter who now calls Austin, Texas home. A creative and prolific artist, she has released six solo albums and toured nationally throughout the USA and internationally. An accomplished guitarist, Giulia also plays ukulele and sings in four languages. Her unique style is a cocktail of Indie Rock, Alternative-Americana with a European twist. She has been called smart, pensive and cool, and credited with psychedelic grooveability whilst "baring her clairvoyant soul" to "deliver musical mojo."
Giulia began her life in music at just eight years old, when she was taught to play guitar by her father, and began to perform traditional folk songs. Later, she began writing songs and making records. Performing at the Acoustic Guitar Meeting in Sarzana in spring 2010, her accomplished guitar style and songs earned her the "New Sounds Of Acoustic Music" award.
https://www.giuliamillanta.com
Nick Barraclough
Nick Barraclough is a British radio producer, presenter, musician and writer, who is best known for hosting shows related to specialist American music. In 2010 he was awarded the Country Music Association’s International Country Broadcaster Award for his work on promoting country music in the UK. He is also the founder of the radio production company Smooth Operations. Nick has been in a number of bands, including Telephone Bill and the Smooth Operators and Brokedown Palace. During lockdown he has been writing songs.
Please support the performers taking part in this Virtual Concert by buying merchandise or giving donations using their links above. Thank you.
If you would like to make a donation to a performer who doesn't have a suitable link on their website, you can now make a donation to the Cambridge Folk Club Tip Jar at https://paypal.me/cambridgefolkclub
When you make a donation, please add a note to let us know which performer or performers the donation is for. Any donations received without a note will be shared between all the performers in this concert.
Thank you to all who have made donations to the performers in our previous virtual concerts.
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
This event 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
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Tip Jar
If you would like to make a donation to a performer who doesn't have a suitable link on their website, you can now make a donation to the Cambridge Folk Club Tip Jar at https://paypal.me/cambridgefolkclub
When you make a donation, please add a note to let us know which performer or performers the donation is for. Any donations received without a note will be shared between all the performers that evening.
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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.