English Dance and Song Spring 2016
EDS, the magazine of the English Folk Dance and Song Society, is the world’s oldest magazine for folk music and dance. First published in 1936, EDS is essential reading for anyone with a passion for folk arts. The following sample article is copyright. You are welcome to share it in the format supplied and accompanied by this title page, but you may not reproduce it, in full or in part, by any other means.
Our club in our pub
In a growing world of trendy bars and microbreweries, it’s a sad fact that many traditional old British pubs are struggling to survive. In the first in our new series of features about how important your local pub is to your folk club (and vice versa), Richard Catton reports on the Black Swan (the pub and the club from which takes it’s name) in York
When their regular venue is forced to shut, folk clubs and folk nights sometimes have to find a home in the most un-folkiest of places. It can be a tough gig for those hoping to transport an audience, whether through music or song, to the green hills of merry old England, when the setting is a harshly lit, characterless back room of a faceless building.
Walking into the magnificent Black Swan Inn, situated in York’s Peasholme Green, you know immediately this is not the kind of alehouse where you’ll find sodium lights and Formica tables. The floor is paved with stone flags, the walls and even the staircases are wonderfully skewed and the air is filled with the sweet fragrance of burning logs from the crackling fire in the dimly-lit bar. The Black Swan Inn carries its 600 years very well indeed.
It’s easy, then, to understand its popularity with York residents and visitors from all over the world and, if the stories are to be believed, visitors from the next world. The pub boasts a fantastic array of ghosts including an impatient chap in a bowler hat who is said to sit tutting away to himself in the bar. Then there is the ghostly pair of legs that wanders up the back stairs to the landlord’s quarters.
Unlike the spectral residents of the pub, The Black Swan Folk Club is very much alive. This is largely down to organiser Roland Walls, a man with a genuine passion for the club, the pub and the community. We caught up with him on a Thursday club night in the wonderful surroundings of the Black Swan’s panelled upstairs room.
“I came to York in 1982 and it (the club) had been going a long time then,” he said
“We have heard it was started in York University in the mid-1970s. Students started the club on campus but within a few weeks they moved it here and named it after the pub, which means you’re a bit of a hostage to fortune, but it’s worked out. There aren’t many clubs that have been in the same pub for 40 years.
“We have been through five landlords, which isn’t bad compared to how many some pubs get through nowadays. They’ve all been supportive of the club.”
Current landlord Andy Macklewain-Cross took on the Black Swan in 2009 and admits he knew little of the folk scene. Nevertheless, Andy welcomed the club back after a short period of closure, which had forced Roland and his team to decamp to a nearby pub each Thursday.
Roland recounts a wonderful story of how a firm friendship between club and pub landlord was swiftly established.
“Andy didn’t quite know what to expect and had no experience of folk clubs,” said Roland.
“Two or three weeks after we moved back into the Black Swan, we got a phone call from the people who run the BBC Radio 2 Folk Awards to tell us that we had got Folk Club of the Year
“Andy was mightily impressed and he has the trophy on display downstairs. That obviously got us off to a good start with him.”
“The folk club is as much a part of the pub as the pub is part of the folk club; the two go together and work very well as a partnership. Andy Macklewain-Cross, Landlord
Andy added: “The people who come to the club are lovely and a lot of them have become friends.”
There have been very few times the folk club hasn’t been able to have its regular Thursday night in the pub. Once, under a previous landlord, the room had been double-booked with someone who wanted to hold a medieval banquet.
“I hastily booked a room at The Golden Slipper down the road and I stood outside the door of the Black Swan redirecting people there’” said Roland.
“The night was notable because one man turned up who was in the Army and had been posted to York. That man was Stan Graham, who is now a stalwart of the club.”
Stan is one of a small core of members who help Roland run the club. Another is Eddie Affleck, who gave us an insight into the way things are done.
“We run it with three weeks of guests and one week of our popular singers’ and performers’ night,” he said.
“Because we have such a variety of artists we a get a different audience every week – we like that because it keeps the place lively.
“We used to do the guest nights acoustically in the eighties but it’s a bit of a battle when you have the windows open and there’s traffic noise,” Roland went on
“We had nights where people struggled to be heard. Consequently artists began to ask for a PA system and we thought we’d better get our own.”
On the night we visited, we spoke to a group of visitors from neighbouring West Yorkshire who had made the trip purely because of the club’s reputation. We also met a language teacher who had brought a small number of students from Moscow, Thailand and Denmark for an insight into English culture.
“A lot of clubs have their upstairs rooms which are just storage rooms with mismatched bits of furniture,” said Roland.
“We have a room from the late 1600s with real heritage and great atmosphere. We are very lucky.”
There’s little doubt the club is healthy. On the night we visited there was a record-breaking 21 performers, of all ages. Indeed, The Black Swan prides itself on giving a voice to up-and-coming younger performers.
Eddie added: “Ever since the nineties we have wanted to give young performers a push.
“About 15 years ago we began to think the club might die a death because there were no youngsters coming through. But then there came this explosion of new talent and it was a revelation how good they were.”
The Black Swan now sets aside occasional nights especially for young performers.
Roland confesses he hopes to see a new generation step up to help take up the reins at The Black Swan some day in the future.
“We’re all in our 60s and you wonder just how long this can be viable,” he said.
“There are a lot of young performers but relatively few of them are promoting live music.
“I’d like to think when it comes to us retiring there will be some context of live folk music in York.”
Roland may have his concerns for the future but for now the club is in safe hands and shows no sign of waning in popularity. And while he may not admit it, a large part of that is down to Roland himself.
Another of Roland’s coorganisers, Phil Cerny, said: “As the one who does all the organising, it’s amazing Roland doesn’t sing or perform. But it’s Roland who knows everything about the club; it couldn’t exist without him.”
The Black Swan spreads its wings
As well as the folk club’s regular Thursday night slot at the pub, Roland and the team run two annual events, but also work closely with promoters to put on one-off shows at York’s National Centre for Early Music, bringing bigger named folk artists to the city.
The Winter Folk Day has been running for seven years and takes place in the Black Swan in January. The event is geared towards York residents with the aim of promoting folk to those who would not normally engage with the music
Coming up on June 3, 4 and 5 is City of York Folk Weekend. This free event takes place at the Black Swan and sees a marquee in the pub’s grounds which hosts a Friday night ceilidh followed by two days of concerts. Meanwhile the pub itself plays host to singarounds, musicians’ sessions and workshops.
To find out what’s happening at the Black Swan Folk Club, visit: www.blackswanfolkclub.org.uk
Tell us about the relationship between your folk club and the pub in which it takes place. Please email your stories to [email protected]
