BOTHY FOLK CLUB SOUTHPORT AT 60
The Bothy Folk Club has recently had its 60th birthday since opening in Southport. To celebrate we held a ‘sold out’, weekend of concerts, culminating with a special singers night on the club’s normal Sunday evening.
After coming through ‘lockdown’ we had to find a new venue. We have been fortunate to have found a little gem of a place in the centre of Southport, The Bijou Cinema. They kindly let us have the whole venue for the weekend. The evening concerts were held in the 70-seater cinema and the afternoon concerts & Sunday singers night were held in our normal upstairs clubroom. We were also given the run of the place to use for a wonderful display of Bothy memorabilia. The whole event was ably organised by our strong team of resident performers. During all that time there have been many comings & goings. We were particularly sad at the passing of our longest running organiser Clive Pownceby. However, the longest serving official, on the door and looking after all our finances since, is Godfrey Boardman and a special award was made to Godfrey during the weekend.
The whole weekend kicked off in fine style with a Friday evening concert featuring long-time supporter of the club, Steve Tilston with Hugh Bradley, ably supported by long-time club favourites Scolds Bridle (celebrating 50 years of performing together). Liz & Sue gave us a superb mix of songs accompanied with good humour, honed to perfection with that certain charisma that they bring to their performances, making you feel like you have known them for years, which a lot of us have.
Steve seems to get better with every performance, such good singing & songwriting with guitar work to marvel at, with Hugh Bradley adding his subtle double bass work to the songs. They really work together well, reminding us why Steve has been booked so many times over the years.
Saturday afternoon it was the turn of the resident singers to entertain us with a scattering of ‘special guests’ added to the lineup. Unfortunately, a number of guests spots had to be cancelled on both Saturday & Sunday due to illness & mishaps. Fortunately, ex-resident singer Dave Whitehead was persuaded to fill in one spot and the other guest spot was the superb blues artist Raphael Callaghan who is also an ex-resident singer.
Before the Saturday evening’s concert there was a singaround held to bridge the gap between concerts. This was followed by the amazing Granny’s Attic.
As a complete contrast, our opening act on Saturday night was ex-resident David Hirst, who gave us something very different. Accompanying himself on acoustic guitar, his soulful voice was brought to bear on soul music of the 50s & 60s, which is his latest project. He is so good. Songs from Ray Charles through to Nina Simone with some nice guitar work, such a contrast from his other iteration in the unaccompanied traditional trio Ragged Trousers.
Granny’s Attic: wow, what energy. They bounced on, bounced about and still managed to sing and play superbly. It would be wrong to imply that it was all high energy; loads of subtlety and light & shade to their music too. They take traditional folk music & treat it with the respect it deserves. All are superb musicians but they are also folklorists & researchers, finding new songs and tunes, adding their own arrangements to bring them to life. We finished Saturday night on a high.
Sunday afternoon’s concert featured a different set of resident singers, with a lot of collaborations between them. Featured guest was LocTup Together, who nearly went the same way as our other guests. Chris had her arm in a sling. Luckily it didn’t stop her from singing. Chris & Ian have been fairly regular visitors recently, so it was nice to see an extended spot from them; their voices go together so well.
Sunday evening & the end is in sight. An extended singers night with some of our regular floor singers & some who had come for the weekend. We managed to fit everybody in for 3 songs each & managed to hear over 36 songs/poems. We had people come from Anglesey, Cheshire, North Wales & as far south as Bedfordshire. I like to think everyone had a good time.
That is not the end though. We have a full programme of guests booked through to 2026, apart from a break in August where we retire to The Guesthouse pub for singarounds.
To follow…..Up to the summer break we have Nick Dow, Chris Manners, Ben Robertson, Pauline Vallance. September onwards…...Flossie Malavialle, John Ward Trio, Danny Bradley, Julian Littman, Paul Reid & Pete Rimmer, Rag Mama Rag, Chris Cleverley, Tim Edey, Bella Gaffney & Kate Griffin.
All Photos by Les Brown
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