CityLife

Folk gets pride of place as Band plays on

BAND LEADER Gavin Sharp

FOR anyone who’s spent any time at all involved with the music scene in Manchester, Swan Street’s Band On The Wall is bound to have a special place in their heart.

So there’s a palpable sense of excitement that, after being closed for nearly five years, one of our most influential and historic music venues is re-opening its doors and preparing for a new lease of life.

In the Seventies punk era, the Buzzcocks, John Cooper Clarke and Joy Division played there, along with many more forgettable outfits, while the comedy nights were a proving ground for Steve Coogan, Caroline Aherne and John Thomson (who has been very much involved in the current rebirth – he might even be giving drumming lessons there, he threatens). 

The venue was run at the time by the redoubtable Steve Morris, a saxophonist and entrepreneur, and leased by The Jazz Centre Society, meaning that the BOTW attracted Abdullah Ibrahim, Art Blakey’s Jazz Messengers, Barney Kessel, Jimmy Witherspoon, Stan Tracey, Charlie Byrd, George Melly and a host of other greats. 

Some of my own memories of the place include shouting out the chorus to Cooper Clarke’s Beasley Street, egged on by an over-refreshed Peter Hook; seeing a visibly ailing Dr John played there on two successive nights and marvelling that he could be so dreadful at one and yet brilliant at the other; and getting unforgivably drunk there – more than once, actually! – with the great Texas songwriter Guy Clark, who often played “the Band” the because his English tour manager used to go to Manchester University, loved the venue and made sure it was always on Guy’s European itinerary.

The mighty African musician Remmy Ongala was so cool that he played his whole first set with the flies on his designer trousers undone.

A feisty teenager named Thea Gilmore first impinged on my consciousness there, supporting someone who I’ve long-since forgotten (she’s playing there again on December 1) and, not long before it closed, the fantastic Tuareg blues-rock band Tinariwen had the whole place rocking.

Improbably, model and actress Milla Jovovic once played there too, when she was just a model anxious to get a musical career off the ground.

But the venue opened long before that era. In fact, it’s 206 years since the original incarnation of the Band, The George And Dragon opened in 1803 at a time when Swan Street was teeming with life. Buskers and travelling players provided the entertainment and the pub would trade almost round the clock.

A famous photo taken in the 1930s shows the origins of the venue’s name. The stage then was little more than a shelf on the wall, on which the likes of accordion player Rudi Mancini would play.

When Steve Morris turned the ailing inn into a jazz venue in 1975 he officially adopted that long-time nickname, The Band On The Wall, which closed its doors three decades later on New Year’s Eve 2004 for a facelift expected to take two years, Those initial plans went awry but instead the BOTW has expanded into former shop premises next door on Swan Street which was, between 1914 and 1917, one of Manchester’s first picture houses.

Box office

This provides the new entrance, box office and foyer bar for the BOTW, and offices above it are being let to Greater Manchester Music Action Zone, which encourages young people into music.
 

The new venue will enjoy state-of-the-art facilities, including high-definition cameras, and a top quality sound system linked to a recording studio.

The venue will use these recordings to build up its own archive. And, with the artists’ permission, the venue’s website can be offering broadcast-quality excerpts of shows free of charge to the world within hours of them happening.

But what really counts is the music and it’s noticeable that, apart from honouring its jazz heritage with the likes of tonight’s sold-out Julian Joseph/Mica Paris show and its punky past with tomorrow’s set from A Certain Ratio, the venue seems to be proving rather partial to some of the best folk/roots sounds from around the world.

In fact, it’s a uniquely impressive line-up. The world has recently fallen for The Unthanks (previously Rachel Unthank And the Winterset) and you can hear why when they play at BOTW on October 19 and 20.

Like The Unthanks, Jim Moray (playing on October 23) has been a huge success at the BBC Radio 2 Folk awards and at folk festivals the length and breadth of the land. With his laptop and electric guitar, Jim helped demonstrate how traditional song can be revitalised by contemporary technology.

Equally instrumental in taking folk back to the future have been Edward II (November 7) and their remarkable, danceable fusion of English country folk and reggae. Celtic big band sounds come from our own Michael McGoldrick Big Band (October 9) and Salsa Celtica (November 13 and 14), whose synthesis of Scottish and Irish traditional music with Latin American salsa proved a smash hit with audiences at this year’s Cambridge Folk Festival.

Chris Wood (November 21) is currently the holder of the Radio 2 Folk Award for Singer of the Year and Album of the Year, while another inveterate and redoubtable award-winner is the great Martin Simpson (November 27).

British folk

There are, though, few more resonant names in British folk than another Martin, surname Carthy. He’s gracing the venue a week after Simpson, on December 4 with the week in between featuring folk-rock pioneers Jacqui McShee and John Renbourn (November 29).
Looking further afield, there’s the infectious Congolese soukous of Kanda Bongo Man (October 2), the splendid American singer Lucy Kaplansky (October 10) and, on October 13, the wonderful Devon Sproule.

“Last year was a good one,” the Virginian songwriter tells me, “and full of adventures. I drove myself all the way from Scotland on the left side of the road for a radio show. I learned the intro to ‘Johnny B. Goode’ before 8am in a Spanish hotel. I even smoked a ‘J’ with Lucinda Williams and kept my cool.”

Now, she gets to add being one of the first acts at an iconic venue to that list. 

I’m pretty sure that I remember going along to the BOTW to “relax” after one of the best shows anyone in Manchester saw in the Seventies – fact! – which was Little Feat at the Free Trade Hall.

That band’s Paul Barrere and Fred Tackett now spend part of their touring lives as a fantastic acoustic duet, playing songs from the Little Feat catalogue and others with a decidedly different twist.

They’ll be playing at the BOTW on December 5 – yet another in a fantastically impressive opening season for one of Manchester’s great venues.

Discover the rest of the shows on bandonthewall.org and I’ll see you there!

The Band On The Wall re-opens tonight with a SOLD OUT concert featuring Mica Paris and Julian Joseph. See bandonthewall.org for upcoming events.