Links Hotel, Montrose (the 'suite' where the folk club takes place anyway)
In less than a month we will be moving house (and let that
explain the recent lack of blogging and all other forms of modern communication).
We are not moving too far (an hour or so away… by car) but it is a big move in
lots of ways and I am pretty excited about it. It’s not that I don’t love this
area (we are currently just on the edge of Montrose in Angus) but we have lived
in the same place for a long time now (14 years in this house, 16 in total in
Angus) and I am a moving-about kind of person. It feels so right to me to be
finally emptying these cupboards and packing boxes and thinking about change.
Montrose has been an amazing place to be. For a start it has
huge (often empty) beaches and long sunny days and amazing skies (ages ago I
wrote a very little poem about the latter called Looking up in Montrose – you
can find that, along with a few other poems, here). There are various places of interest nearby too if you’re
mad for wildlife (St Cyrus, the Basin) and it is a just a very pretty little
town (or a ‘bonnie wee toon’ as I find myself saying more and more… and the more I say
it the less strange that version feels in my mouth… I’m not doing it on purpose… I am just less English every day). But
one of the things I will miss the most when we move on is the local folk club as it has been important to me in so many ways (social life, cultural life, musical life, philosophical life, poetry life...). For all my time here it has been run by the same person and held in the same venue (the Links Hotel), though there have been changes to the
hotel over the years. The ‘stage’ for the club, for example, has been in
different rooms and different parts of the same room… and you only need to know this
to understand what I’m going on about in the poem at the end of this post... if
you stay with me that long…
When we moved to Montrose I was 37 and I had never been to a
folk (music) club. I didn’t grow up listening to anything that I would have
called traditional or folk music though I had, I suppose, gone through phases
of listening to some folky artists, like Neil Young and Joni Mitchell, but
that had mainly been a private kind of listening and I don’t think I ever knew
what to call that kind of music (I’m not sure I still do..). In 2004 in
particular I was in a period of recovery from listening to far too much house music and so really at that point I was happy to
listen to anything that didn’t have an endlessly banging drum machine (and
therefore a folk club was the perfect antidote – I think I’ve seen one drummer there in 14 years and only odd flashes of a drum machine…). I have gone to
the club more or less regularly for all our time here and it has given me so
many great nights of music and taught me so many things. It has been a very
good friend.
Ours is the kind of folk club that takes place every fortnight and invites a guest artist or
band and gets them to play, on the whole, two sets of 45 minutes or so (many are Scottish but certainly not all... lots also from Ireland, England, the US, Canada, plus an Italian, some Australians, New Zealanders...). There are also
support slots now and then and, most weeks, an opportunity for locals to do a
song or two in the middle part of the evening (or maybe even a poem – if they're really cheeky…). The quality of the guests’ music is phenomenal – amazing musicianship,
often excellent songwriting of their own and, almost always, they tell a good
tale too so you get a very broad experience, much more than just a few hours of
music. After all these years I have
learned to appreciate the stricter traditional instrumental music (though I can’t
say I will continue listening to it all that much) but some of the singing (and
the songs – both old and new) will definitely come with me (in my memory, in my
hard drive…) and will remain an important part of my life. I can’t even start
to list some of the great artists I have heard at the club (some of them you might have
heard of, many others you won’t) but I suppose I could mention (once again) how
without Montrose Folk Club I would never have heard the incomparable Michael Marra. I saw him 3 times in Montrose (and once in Dundee) and I have mentioned
before my poem about his performances at the club and local songwriter Gary Anderson’s version of that poem turned into a song.
So to get to the new poem… quite a few years ago I wrote a
poem about the folk club (called, shockingly, Folk club) and you can read it,
if you want to, at the end of a long rambling post at the old blog (it’s here –
the poem is in my first book More about the song too). That blog post (very
long, very full of… something I don’t feel much anymore…is it youth?) also details
how and when I started reading poems aloud during the open mic/floor spot part of
the evening at the folk club and all that that meant to me (a lot… ). And as I
sat in the folk club last week (enjoying a wonderful night of music and raconteuring
from Findlay Napier…up from Glasgow, down from Grantown-on-Spey…) I thought
maybe I should try to write an updated version of my folk club poem – something
to read (as a thank-you) in a couple of weeks’ time when I go down to hear the
Delightful Squalor Trio and maybe say a few good-byes (if temporary ones, we’re
not moving that far away). And so I wrote another poem and you can read it here.
It isn’t fancy – that’s not the folk club way (not in Montrose anyway). Thanks
for reading.
Montrose Folk Club (2018)
Well, the hotel has changed
And, of course, so have we –
Our faces, our places,
The way that we see.
The bar’s still expensive
And yet here we are.
We turn to the music,
Our comfort, our star.
We sit (never dance!),
Put our stories on hold
As we laugh, hum and cry
With the new and the old.
It’s all “tell us a good one”
And “play us a tune”.
Because winter is coming.
Yes, even in June.
The quicks and the slows
And the chairs are the same.
We are nothing but folk.
There’s a clue in our name.
It’s a club, but it’s not
And the rules, they are few –
Just listen and drift,
Be a more rounded you.
There is one other note
And again it will rhyme –
You’ve been kind to this rambler,
So thanks for the time.
RF 2018
Montrose folk club's website is here. There is a facebook page too.
