Cellar Upstairs Folk Club

Traditional music in Central London 

Monday evenings at 8.00

Winter and Spring Programme 2024

15 Apr: Pauline Vallance & Jacynth Hamill  (also known as Here and There) are a Scottish-Irish folk duo. Pauline, who hails from Ayrshire in Scotland, is a multi-talented singer, musician, harpist, flautist and songwriter. Her CDs include Golden Slumbers, a beautiful selection of soothing lullabies, and, most recently, The World's a Gift, a collection of her own songs about life and those who are important to us. It was nominated for Scottish Album of the Year and was deemed a “must-listen” by Folk London. Jacynth, originally from Coleraine, lives in Belfast and loves to tour around sharing her clear, calming voice with audiences small and large. She often adds a little dancing to proceedings. Together they can be heard on Red Winged Blackbird, the final CD of Caim, the group they previously were in; on it there are traditional Irish and Scottish songs, covers and their own compositions. Their gigs reflect this mix, whether concerts, folk clubs, care homes or conferences. Solo and harmony singing, lively or soothing instrumentals, story and dance – it’s great craic.
 
 

22 Apr: Tyburn Road: Ian Giles and Dave Townsend, Oxfordshire-based singers and squeezeboxers of high renown, have been singing and playing together for more years than either will readily admit to. They bring to the stage a wealth of experience performing, touring and researching traditional music. With voices, concertina and melodeon, they offer a delightful repertoire of unusual songs and tunes, and their comfortable and relaxed style of presentation makes the perfect setting for their commitment to the material and their consummate musicianship. Dave is the English Concertina specialist, while Ian plays the two-row melodeon.
 
 

29 Apr: Robin Gillan’s music recalls the timeless old field recordings of the 1950s, ’60s and ’70s and early, commercial country recordings from the 1920s. Described as a polymath musician, he delivers songs with power and sensitivity. Equally adept at five-string banjo, fiddle, harmonica, guitar and melodeon, he draws upon the music of the British Isles and the USA, and his playing has rawness, balanced by technical ability, producing an archaic sound rarely achieved in the 21st century. His fiddle playing conjures up backwoods mountain scenes and soft, rainy pastures. He has recorded with numerous bands and artists, including folk legend Tom Paley, has won several awards for his fiddle and banjo playing and has drawn the attention of such diverse musical figures as Reg Hall, Bruce Molsky, Yehudhi Menuhin and Noel Gallagher.

6 May: Janice Burns & Jon Doran are an award-winning Anglo-Scottish duo who came together after discovering a shared love of traditional music and songs that tell vivid stories about the nature of life and our place in the world. Janice and Jon’s “clever and uncluttered musical storytelling” (Songlines) comes alive through tight vocal harmonies and sensitive interplay between mandolin, bouzouki, and guitar. Their arrangements have a spellbinding presence and an understated energy that transports their songs from the pages of books and manuscripts into the imagination of the listener.

13 May: The Oakstone Trio came together in 2022 for a gig at Oxford Folk Weekend after years of playing together on the Oxford session scene and in folk clubs. Louis Thurman (melodeons, vocals), Mitch Keely (guitar, vocals), and Joshua Newman (fiddle, viola, vocals) pair new compositions with old tunes and solo ballads with harmony chorus songs. They combine a nuanced, improvisatory approach to tunes with energy and warmth, allowing seldom-heard melodies to escape old manuscripts and giving well-loved session tunes the space to find new directions. They’ve worked with the Bodleian Library to deliver performances and workshops, played sold-out gigs at festivals and clubs, and supported Nancy Kerr and James Fagan.

20 May: Duck Soup As Paul Burgess once said in a review, there's eclectic – and then there's Duck Soup. The band features Dan Quinn (melodeons and vocals), Ian Kearey (dobro, bass, mandolin, etc) and Adam Bushell (marimba, mandolin, phono-fiddle and musical saw) and they perform traditional English folk songs and melodies from England, Shetland and Quebec. To the tradition, they add a hint of music hall, a dollop of groove and a soupçon of surreality and then play it all with vigour and verve.

27 May: closed for bank holiday.

3 June: Kate Lissauer is a multi-instrumentalist, singer, songwriter and composer from Maryland, USA, who honed her musical skills and creativity on the byways of rural West Virginia, and has lived in the UK for many years. She is a proud ambassador for the rich living tradition of songs and tunes from North American roots and the early days of country music. Kate is a multi-award-winning fiddler both in her home state and in the UK, and an excellent banjo and guitar player and singer.

10 June: Georgia Shackleton works with fiddle, voice, tenor guitar and drones to create crisp arrangements of old songs and new compositions. She is a critically acclaimed songwriter, whose self-penned songs and traditional re-workings have achieved national radio play on BBC Radio 2, BBC Radio 4 and a BBC3 live session. Georgia is greatly influenced by the traditional singers of the east of England, such as Harry Cox, Walter Pardon and Phoebe Smith. The traditional material she performs often stems from her native East Anglia, and her own compositions are often inspired by stories from the region and the area’s unique, compelling landscape. Her solo album, Harry’s Seagull, is a celebration of East Anglian traditional music. The album is named after a tune she wrote and dedicated to Harry Cox, after the touching discovery that he kept a wounded seagull as a pet for a period of time.

17 June: Chris Miles & Gearaidh Matthews Chris, no stranger to the Cellar Upstairs, is a Scottish singer of traditional songs, Scottish, Irish and English. In the past she sang with her contemporaries Aileen Carr and the late Gordeanna McCulloch and Maureen Jelks as Palaver, as well as in a duo with Gordeanna, while continuing to perform solo. In recent years she has been accompanied by Gearaidh, an excellent guitarist from Drogheda in Ireland, and this will be their third time together at the club. In 2022 they toured the US for five weeks, delighting American aficionados of traditional ballads and songs. They do contemporary stuff too!

then – closed until September