For tickets, click here

Canterbury band, ShyChlo, who are through to the finals of the UK’s biggest UNSIGNED competition, will play on July 7th. For tickets, click here Think….. Rage Against the Machine, raised on Slipknot, with a secret love of pop melodies, fronted by a female MC….Brilliant

Next up is Marcus Bonfanti (& band). Utterly spellbinding young British Blues guitarist with a voice like sand and glue. He’s likely to be loosening the plaster from the ceiling on July 21st. For tickets click here

Further details coming soon.

Tickets are £7 and available online here

Saturday May 19th SKINNY LISTER

2011 PRS award winners for the most performances at UK festivals, Skinny Lister have been crowned the “hardest working band in Britain” (Evening Standard). With their rip-roaring pop infused punk- folk, they are like The Pogues’ rum fuelled English cousin.

Skinny Lister are about good times, infectious camaraderie and high energy performances with their modern take on traditional folk,  and they have been riotously swinging the festival scene from day one. Signed to Rob Da Bank’s label with their debut out in June, Skinny Lister look set to be one of the live bands of the decade.

Skinny Lister website   http://www.skinnylister.com

Tickets are £7 and available online here

Up on their stomping feet and clicking their heels, the Skinny Lister sound took hold as Dan’s perceptive ballads and folkie idylls were boosted by an eruption of a rambunctious free spirited rum fueled party music. Soon the Skinny Lister sound was charging down the nation’s canals and waterways, bursting into spontaneous song in pubs and clubs, kicking up a summer frenzy at numerous festivals. Over
30 festivals in fact, a nonstop work rate that saw them acknowledged and awarded by PRS as the ‘Hardest Working Band’ of summer 2011. “We travelled hundreds of miles together in a Land Rover with a double bass strapped to the roof, sharing the driving, playing gigs every night and going out to party afterwards. We didn’t make it easy on ourselves but it does bond you as family.”Dan recollects.

Their allure is immediate – at a time when modern homegrown folk music often spells designer bearded, theme park Americanisation, Skinny Lister are a welcome throwback to earthier bands. Their musical blend has something of The Pogues’ infectious camaraderie and jovial recklessness combined with the bucolic English landscape of Alfred Wainwright’s fell walking guides.

Now, captured by producer David Wrench (Bat for Lashes, James Yorkston) on debut album Forge & Flagon, the band’s distinctive qualities make their mark. Titled after a homemade pub ran by Lorna and Max’s family friends, Forge & Flagon marks Skinny Lister as an
outfit who are decidedly more than the sum of their parts. Galvanised by months of road action they transform traditional and contemporary influence into a singular sound. See them live and the impression is fortified. Not least as Lorna’s outgoing crowd connecting personality is replicated by the rum dispensing, skirt hiking, leg shaking, five strong, all female, party starting troupe the Skinny Sisters.

The group’s folk roots go back to Leicester where Lorna and melodeon playing Max spent much of their youth at local folk clubs, hanging out  under the stairs as the traditional sound filled the air. When Lorna reconnected with Max and Dan in London she found their interest in the local Thameside folk scene had blossomed to provide an exciting outlet for her newly finessed singing and ukulele skills.

“As soon as they put the diddles, polkas and jigs in there, there was no holding me back,” she laughs.

“We never sat down again,” explains Dan logically.

The folk fever proved infectious and irresistible; “For years on the first weekend after Plough Monday every year, my dad has gone to sing songs and get legless with the local Molly Dancers. I disowned him at the time but now, of course, I join him!” notes Lorna.

“The idea of a whole pub belting out a good tune, it’s what pubs are for,” sighs Lorna.

In an era when singing a song in a pub can get you thrown out for rowdiness, Skinny Lister - not to mention the Skinny Sisters – are a joyful reassertion of community principles.

“If you can capture something like that in a gig, people are going to go away feeling part of something bigger rather than just standing around with a beer,” Lorna reasons.

“We aren’t taking the piss, it’s a serious primal thing. You don’t need to have been a sailor to appreciate a sea shanty.” insists Dan.
The debut album unfurls Skinny Lister’s charms in detail. Up tempo carouser John Kanaka, a trade sea shanty dating from Mule’s early Greenwich days, and stomping celebrations Trawler Man and Forty Pound Wedding; (a song written by Party George – Lorna and Max’s father – which they reinvent with characteristic verve) are winningly contrasted with the reflective coming of age waltz Seventeen Summers, the lovely nature appreciating Peregrine Fly and the skinny-dipping frolics of Colours.

Skinny Lister the stand-apart folk band – not afraid to match sensitivity with a high kicking free for all. Time to open the floodgates and get the deck party started. (But beware the Skinny Sisters, folks – those ladies take no prisoners!)

Saturday MAY 5th      JANICE GRAHAM BAND

Like the mutant offspring of Arctic Monkeys and The Specials, this band could start a party in an empty room.

The best of the new breed of Manchester bands, Janice Graham Band’s debut album has been touted as album of the year. With the buzz around them building and having made fans of The Stone Roses and  Happy Mondays, along with support from Radio 2, 6 Music, XFM, Q and NME, this band are set to be huge. Catch them before they go global.

“Snotty as a used hanky and all the better for it” Record Collector

Band wesbite  http://janicegrahamband.com/

Tickets are available online here

Straight out of Wythenshawe, an area that hadn’t really been associated with the cutting edge of Manchester music since the post-punk days of the early Durutti Column et al, come Acid Jazz’s newest signing THE JANICE GRAHAM BAND.

The young Manc band age averaging 21 comprises of Joe Jones (lead vocals/bass), Andy Mortan (guitar), Josh Hunt (trumpet and backing vocals) and Tom Scott (drums and backing vocals), are a true garage band; they formed, rehearsed and played their first gigs in a South Manchester garage in October 2008. The lads had known each other from around the estate (school, playing football, parties, etc) for years.  A chance meeting outside a charity shop where Tom and Andy had just bought a drum (Tom wanted to learn the drums) led to the formation of the band. Watching lead singer Joe Jones snake around the stage like he owns the place, you wouldn’t believe that he couldn’t play the bass and had never sung when the band was formed.

Endless jamming in the garage ensued , getting to know their instruments and each other as people

Convention is a difficult little island to skirt around. Stick too close and you end up getting sucked into a colony of sound-alike bands that are indistinguishable apart from subtle variations in the fraying of the tightly worn jeans. Steer too far away from land and you run the risk of becoming the master of your domain; but with pitifully few little souls and sailors to catalogue your mysterious and exotic voyage. Of course, no bugger told THE JANICE GRAHAM BAND any of this. Convention is a word that doesn’t exist in the Janice Graham vocabulary. And as a result the band are quite extraordinary. They kaleidoscope through musical influences at the flick of a plectrum in absolute precision, keeping every song full of deliciously danceable and immediate ideas that are never allowed to become tiresome before swiftly morphing into the next snaking groove or flourishing brass ‘n’ bass interjection.

The JGB sound is heavily fussed with Hip Hop , Funk , Soul , Garage Rock , Jazz , Reggae/Ska influences , but the band are none of these, somehow the band transcend their influences and come out the other side with there own sound.

starts in May at The Duke in Whitstable High Street,  featuring new and up and coming bands and those making a real mark on the live scene in the UK and abroad.

There are so many good live bands out there that can’t yet draw sell-out crowds at venues like The East Quay. We will put on some of the best new live bands at a really  intimate venue. Whether we will end up seeing the next Coldplay, Arctic Monkeys or Florence remains to be seen, but you can expect some great performances.

Whether you are into folk, indie, blues, pop, reggae or whatever, we should have something for you over the next few months. If you want to discover new music that is starting to get noticed, then this is for you. The ticket price will be as low as we can make it and the calibre of the bands as high as possible.

Sat May 5^th JANICE GRAHAM BAND

Like the mutant offspring of Arctic Monkeys and The Specials, this band could start a party in an empty room.

The best of the new breed of Manchester bands, Janice Graham Band’s debut album has been touted as album of the year. With the buzz around  them building and having made fans of  The Stone Roses and  Happy Mondays, along with support from Radio 2, 6 Music, XFM, Q and NME, this band are set to be huge. Catch them before they go global.

“Snotty as a used hanky and all the better for it” Record Collector

Sat May 19^th SKINNY  LISTER

2011 PRS award winners for the most performances at UK festivals, Skinny Lister have been crowned the “hardest working band in Britain” (Evening Standard). With their rip-roaring pop infused punk folk, they are like The Pogues’ rum-fuelled English cousin.

Skinny Lister are about good times, infectious camaraderie and high energy performances with their modern take on traditional folk,  and they have been riotously swinging the festival scene from day one. Signed to Rob Da Bank’s label with their debut out in June, Skinny Lister look set to be one of the live bands of the decade.