The Tonic (Ollie and Malcolm, Julie and Gav) are appearing at The Tonbridge Folk Club on Monday from 8pm. Note that the venue these days is The Flying Dutchman, Hildenborough TN11 9EN. Expect dance tunes, chorus songs, the odd serious song and a bit of a laugh. Click here to find out more about Tonbridge Folk Club
Talented young melodeon, banjo and fiddle player Will Allen has kindly agreed to be our visitor at the end of the month session at The Castle, Brenchley on the 24th September. He’s a stunning, distinctive player as you’ll gather from listening to his Soundcloud recordings. As usual, there will be room for songs and tunes from the crowd, and a few laughs.
I also have two pieces of less good news. The first is that Jeremy and Kay have sold the Gun at Headcorn and are moving to the West Country to run a B&B; we’re obviously sorry to see them go as they have been wonderful hosts for us. We don’t know who the new owners will be or what might be their plans – but we do know the pub will close for at least a fortnight from the end of August. So, as a priority we’re looking for a new venue for the Wednesday workshops and as we can’t think of any pubs in the area with tucked away back rooms, I suspect we’ll likely end up in a village hall. Here’s where you folks might be able to help: do you know a cheap small and comfortable hall not too far away that is at the kind of price we could hope to cover easily with a whip round or small admission fee? It can be really small, as we don’t take up much space, and since we currently have folks coming from North, East, West and South of Horsmonden we don’t want to have to move too far. Also, does anyone know where there might be a good venue for the tunes sessions on the first Sunday if it turns out we can’t return to the Gun from October?
The second piece of news is that the West End Tavern have decided they don’t want to host the first Wednesday chorus nights any longer. I can see their point: our numbers did dwindle over time. Having tried the idea out, Julie and I are not planning to start something similar somewhere else for the time being.
