One of London’s oldest established folk clubs, and one of the very few left in the city, is moving venues and changing the evening it operates.
After meeting on Saturday nights for 62 years, the Cellar will now be held on Mondays. Organiser Sheila Miller told The Irish Post: “We’ve lost our previous venue — where we'd been for more than seven-and-a-half years — as the pub’s new landlord doesn’t want us there, and it has proved impossible to find anywhere for Saturdays, or Fridays, for that matter. So we’ve moved venues and nights We’ll also be starting and finishing slightly earlier —from 8pm to 10.45pm.”
The new venue is an upstairs room in the Alpaca, 84-86 Essex Road, N1 8LU (020 3417 7224, www.thealpaca.co.uk). The pub is about a 10-minute walk from the Angel tube.
As before, no tickets are needed for any of the nights listed below: pay on the door, cash only.
As ever, floor-performers are welcome.
Highlights in the coming weeks include:
February 20: New Deal String Band
A long-established and highly respected band. Joe Locker,
Ben Paley and Robin Gillan play a wide and lively repertoire of American traditional and written folk music, including ballads, fiddle and banjo tunes, blues and folk
March 6: Rosie Stewart
Rosie Stewart, from Fermanagh is a singer in the Ulster tradition. But she has a style that is entirely her own, and picks and chooses her repertoire from songs that might be 200 or 20 years old.
Born Rosie McKeaney in the townland of Cashel in the parish of Garrison, Co. Fermanagh, Stewart has music and song in her veins. The McKeaneys were sought after performers at private house parties, pub sessions, céilís, concerts and parochial nights across Fermanagh
March 13: Oliver Mulligan and Marianne MacAleer
Two fine Irish singers share the evening; Oliver, a traditional singer from Co. Monaghan, sings mostly in English with a few in Irish; Marianne, London Irish by birth, has won 25 All Britain titles for traditional singing in Irish and lilting; Peta Webb has written of her subtle yet intense singing, her command of decoration and her obvious love of the songs and enjoyment of singing
