Author: Joyce Hodge

Alastair McDonald will be the guest at Irvine Folk Club tomorrow night 9th February. Its BYOB and the club starts at 8pm. Admission £8 non members £6 members. Memberships are now due £15 for the year. We will follow Covid
rules for the safety of our members.

Unfortunately the 2022 opening night at Irvine Folk Club with Ian Bruce has had to be postponed due to Covid. Ian has agreed to reschedule so he will now appear on 15th June 2022. Hopefully our next club night on January 26th will go ahead with Brooks Williams. Who can ever forget Brooks on the Friday night of Marymass Folk Festival 2018.

Stephen and Pernille need to introduction to Irvine and will be our very welcome guests on Wednesday. This will be our last club night of 2021 and its been a very strange year. The new flyer is ready for the first few months of 2022 and there are some very good acts coming up. We will adhere to Covid rules. You will be required to wear masks while moving around but can remove them when seated. In view of the latest numbers you may wish to keep your mask on at all times but NO ONE will be allowed entry without a mask. Our aim is to keep our members as safe as we can to try and avoid another lock down. Come along and enjoy a good Christmas night as Irvine Folk Club.

Tim Edey will be the guest at Irvine Folk Club on Wednesday. A welcome return to Irvine for Tim. He was here last just before lockdown and we had a great night. Looking forward to seeing everyone on Wednesday.

Lauren has been in a car accident. She fractured her sternum and a vertebrae but originally thought she could manage on strong pain killers. However last night she emailed me to say the Doctor had said she couldn’t play. Dave Gibb will now be our guest tomorrow night. Dasve has been to the club before and went down very well so looking forward to a good night.

Kate Bramley, Kari Macleod and Simon Haworth are three singer songwriters with eclectic and diverse roots yet somehow they seamlessly come together to create an utterly original and joyful sound. From haunting ballads to swinging country. Celtic roots to driving folk choruses , this band are guaranteed to show audiences good night out.

A friend of Irvine Folk Club for many years Mike McDonald was a regular floor-singer and later a volunteer provider of subtle sound reinforcement for visiting musicians, using his own equipment and years of experience. His contribution is an important piece of the club’s historical jigsaw. In 2019 he had life-changing surgery and chemotherapy for cancer. He pulled through and fought the disease but today, October 19th 2021, he lost the battle. Our thoughts go out to Moira and the family at this sad time.
Mike played bass guitar with Tommy Truesdale and the Sundowners for thirty years but his real solo talent was to recognise and interpret great songs from many genres, reshaping them and making them even more interesting and memorable. Standouts would be his version of Richard Thompson’s “1952 Vincent Black Lightning” and (Maureen’s favourite) Mark Knopfler and James Taylor’s “Sailing to Philadelphia”. No style was out of bounds: The Beatles, Tom Waits, The Roaches, Fats Domino, Robert Burns. He was his own harshest guitar critic. Many instrumental pieces he played were his own work and I could always tell if he thought he’d missed a note even though the audience wouldn’t be able to tell. His face was the giveaway.
When Mike, my irascible, amiable, opinionated, self-deprecating, talented friend, was 50 (it was on his actual birthday) we were sharing a chuckle at the Folk Club at the Redburn Hotel. He was joking about how hard it would be for people to detect any early signs of dementia in him because he felt he’d always been a bit absent-minded, always going back to double-check he’d locked the house door or the car or his motor-bike. I laughed with him and went to introduce the first floor-singer. Some folk might remember that in the early days of small mobile phones I used to wave my phone at the audience and ask them to be sure to turn theirs off. That night I reached into my pocket and, instead of a mobile phone I produced a TV remote control. Mike loved that! A few weeks ago, more than twenty years later, I went to see how he and Moira were faring as his illness progressed. He was weak, a shadow of his old self, but the spark was still there. As I was leaving, my smart-phone fell from my jacket pocket and, hearing the clatter Mike called through from the front room: “I hope that’s not your remote-control.”
My friend has sung his last chorus. The world is a quieter and less interesting place without him. I miss him already.

George Murphy and Frank Cassidy will be the guests at Irvine Folk Club next Wednesday.
We look forward to a good night of Irish music.
George sings, plays guitar, harmonica, tin whistle and bodhran and Frank sings and plays the bouzouki. Looking forward to a good night.

Fingerstyle guitar virtuoso Steve Hicks and singer songwriter Lynn Goulbourn met at a gig in 2007. With a mutual love of folk, jazz, roots and acoustic genres, their musical partnership has flourished and taken them to all corners of the UK, to Germany, France, The Netherlands and the USA.

They thrive on the creative process of stretching established boundaries and perform mesmeric arrangements of traditional, contemporary and self-penned songs and music.

Expect the unexpected……….

Irvine Folk Club will restart on Wednesday 8th September at 8pm in The Vineburgh Community Centre. Admission is £8 for non members £6 for members. Please try to bring the correct entrance fee to reduce the handling of cash. Its BYOB and although we supply glasses it might be better to bring your own till this pandemic is over. There is a cafe serving teas, coffees and soft drinks. Masks must be worn and windows will be opened (slightly) to ensure good ventilation so bring a scarf or wear a ‘hoodie’
Sounds like a lot of rules but we just want everyone to feel safe and avoid any further lockdowns. HAGGERDASH are very popular in Irvine and we look forward to hearing them again.