Nitten Folk Club: Tom Clelland and Wendy Weatherby
Dean Tavern, Newtongrange, 1/5/2025
Nitten Folk Club, Tom Clelland, Wendy Weatherby
Rooted in the community and thriving.
Folk clubs are declining all over the country. There used to be 1500 in the UK; now it’s less than 150. So I was pleasantly surprised when I discovered that Newtongrange, where we are moving soon, has one of the surviving clubs, the Nitten Folk Club which meets on a Thursday night, with a singalong each week and once a month a guest singer. So the editors of the Edinburgh Music Review decided to visit and review the club as part of settling into the community.
The Club meets in the function room of the Dean Tavern, the big pub which came out of the miners’ welfare centre and is still owned by the community. It symbolises that Newtongrange is very much a community and the folk club is part of that community. The function room is a very good room for a folk club with the audience some 60 strong arranged in small tables around the stage and with a good sound system.
We joined the Club: another revelation - £5 to join and £5 for tonight’s ticket. This combined with the very good prices in the pub makes this an affordable night out. The night began with a number of local floor singers who sang very nicely, in particular Gillian Anderson and my neighbour at my table, Charlie Boyle, who gave me a copy of his CD which I look forward to hearing. It’s clear that the Nitten has a good group of local singers which will make their normal singalong a pleasure to attend.
The guests tonight were Tom Clelland, accompanied by the wonderful Wendy Weatherby on cello. Tom is a very pleasant singer-songwriter from a folk and country tradition who entertained us well. The songs were both entertaining and touching, with good opportunities for the audience to join in. I remember particularly ‘Carrion Craw’, commemorating the Battle of Harlaw, and a gentle little song about a distressed young woman in Waterstone’s Cafe. I was left wishing for more traditional songs, with even more opportunity for the very knowledgeable audience to sing in the chorus. There was a decent interval with of course a raffle, which had a large number of prizes. The second half commenced with some more floor singers, including a nice Cyril Tawney song from Richard and good songs from Tom Fairney and Paul Ashcroft. I look forward to hearing more of the local singers; it’s clear that the Nitten has some very good singers among its members.
So it was a very pleasant first night at the Nitten Folk Club and we were made to feel very welcome. There were predictably very few young people in the audience but this is the pattern of folk clubs everywhere. Apparently young people prefer going to big name concerts, for example Capercaillie is almost sold out at the Usher Hall, despite high ticket prices. So let’s hope that the Nitten Folk Club keeps going as long as these old folkies are around in Newtongrange and the surrounding area.
