Monday evenings at 8pm

Venue: The club meets in the Alpaca, 84-86 Essex Road, NI 8LU (020 3417 7224). Nearest underground: Angel; nearest railway station: Essex Road; various buses

Access: The club is in an upstairs room.

Entrance: Pay on the door (cash only), no need to book. Members: £8, non-members: £10, except on nights marked *, when it will be £9 and £11 respectively.

Membership: £4 for the year (from September)

Information: E-mail sheilamiller55@yahoo.co.uk or phone 020 7281 7700

Resident performers: Peta Webb & Ken Hall, Amanda Maclean, Frankie Cleeve, Dave East & Doreen Leighter, Alison Frosdick 

Floor-performers are always welcome.

Programme from 16 March to June 2026

16 March: Kathleen O’Sullivan, Maureen Linane & Andrew Warminger: For St Patrick’s Day (one day early) – traditional singer Kathleen learned to sing from her mother, and all her family sang and played traditional Irish music. She toured with the London Lasses for many years before returning to her unaccompanied singing roots. Maureen Linane is an outstanding player from a dynasty of musicians: her grandparents hailed from Leitrim, and Maureen and her siblings have always been among the best-known and respected musicians on the London Irish scene. She’s had many successes in competitions at the Fleadh, has recorded and toured internationally with the London Lasses, is a regular at sessions with her family, and tutors the next generation of champions. Multi-instrumentalist Andrew’s music reflects the rich and varied canopy of influences he was raised under – trad Irish, folk, country, pop, rock, soul, classical and everything in between. 

23 March: Bird in the Belly is a Brighton-based folk group consisting of folk-duo Hickory Signals (Laura Ward and Adam Ronchetti), alt-folk singer-songwriter Ben Webb (Jinnwoo, Green Ribbons) and multi-instrumentalist and producer Tom Pryor. Together they have collected little-known and forgotten lyrics, poems and stories from around the UK, and set them to “hypnotically original compositions” (fRoots). Their sound is raw and bare-boned with “distinctively contemporary and earthy vocalising” (R2 Magazine) – and harks back to the 1960s folk revival sound. Their debut album, The Crowing, was met with critical acclaim across the board from fRoots, R2, Songlines, Louder Than War, Northern Sky and Folk Radio UK, and the Sunday Express gave it 5/5 and called it the folk album of the year.

30 March and 6 April: closed for Easter

13 April: Ruth & Sadie Price and Lisa Oliver Ruth and Sadie were brought up in West Yorkshire and were heavily influenced by traditional song from an early age. They sing mainly unaccompanied songs from a wide repertoire, which includes songs from their family tradition, from West Yorkshire, from the family’s associations with North America and some contemporary stuff. Over the past decade their spine-tingling sibling harmonies have become increasingly in demand at folk clubs and festivals. “Ruth and Sadie’s voices and harmonies are exemplary, they are superb exponents of quality song, and an opportunity to hear them should not be missed” (organiser of Baston Traditional Music, Lincolnshire). Tonight they will be accompanied by Lisa Oliver, a fine musician, on the harp.

20 April: The Klezmer Klub have been playing freylekhs, bulgars, horas, hongas, sers and other eastern European dance tunes since 1989. Although the dances and songs came out of poverty and oppression, they contain joy, exhilaration and wit alongside the sadness, anger and defiance. While respecting the tradition of the bitter-sweet sound that is klezmer, the band brings them to life from their own perspective of modern life in London, with all the inter-cultural mixing that goes with it.

27 April: Peta Webb, Ken Hall and Simon Hindley: An evening of top-class singing is in store from local legends and long-time club favourites Peta and Ken, joined once again by Simon on guitar and vocals. The material is mainly American, brother duets and country music, in two- or three-part harmony, sometimes a cappella, but more often with guitar and fiddle, or even kazoo, accompaniment. Expect also some solo blues from Simon’s driving voice and guitar. The Crouch End Nightingale, the Wigan Warbler and the Finchley bluesman will put a smile on your face and then break your heart in three places. This is a rare chance to see them. 

4 May: Andrew Frank is an entertaining singer with a lovely voice, a quirky repertoire of serious and comic songs and a facility with the songs of the music hall, Cole Porter, Gershwin, Coward and others. In the past he has plied his trade with Mike Mann, the Salami Brothers, Cosmotheka and Michael Hebbert, and in the West End in Godspell. He has a penchant for one-word-per-note comedy songs, but he’ll also do a pleasing job on several more lyrical offerings.

11 May: Awake Mother is a new duo from the south of England, made up of Minnie Birch and Kathleen P, two critically acclaimed, award-winning musicians who have joined together to present something new and special in the folk tradition. They are keen to share music from that tradition, reigniting old favourites and introducing you to new songs and tales from times gone by. Expect to be invited to sing and stamp along one moment and have your heart strings pulled the next. Fatea said, “I think every folk club in the country will be beating a path to their door”.

18 May: Ken Wilson, from Teesside, sang with his siblings in the Wilson Family for many years, appearing with them at folk clubs and festivals throughout Britain and Europe, as well as performing at the Albert Hall as part of the BBC Proms, making several albums and performing with Sting on the project The Last Ship, which took them to New York to launch the CD and perform the show. He now performs solo, and has released two solo albums. (NB: Tonight the club will meet at the King & Queen, 1 Foley Street, W1W 6DL)

25 May: closed for bank holiday

1 June: Kate Lissauer & Sibs Riesen Kate, an acclaimed leader in the UK’s old-time and country scene, is a multi-instrumentalist, singer, songwriter, composer and multi-award-winning fiddler from Maryland, USA, who has been living and performing in Britain for many years. As a fiddler, she has won many awards in her home state and in the UK, and she is an excellent banjo and guitar player and singer. Tonight she is joined by Sibs Riesen, a stunning Appalachian step-dancer, who adds percussive footwork, body percussion and accompanying vocals.

8 June: Jimmy Hutchison is a highly respected Scottish singer who performs mainly traditional Scots songs and ballads learnt directly from source singers such as Jeannie Robertson, Belle Stewart, Jimmy McBeath and Davy Stewart, plus a good few Irish songs, which he collected there in the 1960s. He is often described as a singer’s singer, and Alastair Clark wrote of him in The Scotsman: “He sings with a craftsmanship and intensity that make the senses tingle”.

15 June: Frankie Armstrong has been singing professionally since 1964, and has sung and run workshops all over Europe, North America and Australia, working in every kind of setting from hospitals to the National Theatre in London. She began running her pioneering voice workshops, based on ethnic styles of singing – where singing is as natural as speaking – in 1975, and is the president of the Natural Voice Network. Her singing of the big traditional ballads is famous, but she also performs political, lyrical and comic songs, among others.

Kevin McDonnell has taken many photos at the Cellar since 2010; you can see them here