The Mudcat Café TM
Thread #136900   Message #3293514
Posted By: Ross Campbell
20-Jan-12 - 02:54 PM
Thread Name: Long-lived folk clubs? 70 yrs?
Subject: RE: Long-lived folk clubs? 60yrs?
From the Blackpool Gazette, October, 2009:-

Fleetwood Folk Club is celebrating 40 successful years.

A few inaccuracies in there - and strangely no mention of Ron Baxter who ran the club after Dave Cooper's time, nor many of the "local singers" who shared the residency in that period. When Ron gave up running the club there was a gap of a couple of years before Mike and Dave as "Spitting on a Roast" restarted the club at the Mount, so the forty years sadly isn't an uninterrupted run.

As well as the other activities connected with the club, the various special shows and programmes for Fylde Folk Festival generated some excellent work in the form of drama/documentaries, songs and poems from Ron himself (a huge body of work, some of which I have begun to document in the Fleetwood & Fishing: Songs of the Trawling Trade thread), and some great songs and poems from Dave Pearce and Dick Gillingham.

The club carries on, currently at the Strawberry Gardens, Poulton Road, Fleetwood, FY7 6TF (http://www.fleetwood-folk.com/ ). Last year saw their contribution to Fleetwood's 175th Anniversary celebration earn two full-house nights at the North Euston Hotel.

Ross