Tag: James Holt

Stockport Venues 13 and 14

In March 2024 Gill and I decided to have a gander at the events contained within the Stockport town of Culture Weekender. After some Steel Band action at the Viaduct Park, we continued up the A6 to reach the Stockport War Memorial Art Gallery located on the corner of Wellington Road South and Greek Street.

The gallery is this very year celebrating its centenary as it was initially opened on 15 October 1925 by Prince Henry. At the time, the local residents decided against a singular traditional war memorial and instead built this as a place of reflection and healing and to commemorate those lost in the First World War. They have a constant rotation of events and there is currently a special exhibition to mark the anniversary with items of hope featuring artworks from local artists, and it is titled ‘Beautiful Things’. 

Stockport War Memorial Art Gallery. Image Credit onestockport.co.uk

It is a neo classically designed building with ‘Rocky’ style steps leading up to the entrance and it achieved Grade II listed status in 2007. It has a marble paved hall and fluted Greek columns and contains four individual gallery spaces. There are plaques inscribed with the names of the 2200 World War 1 casualties and further plaques have been added since to include the later 20th century conflicts.

On the day of our visit there was a highly sobering exhibition in place containing health workers testimonials on their reflections of the realities of working on the front line during the recent pandemic, it brought tears to your eyes!

In the memorial hall at the rear there was a local musician with a fine voice called James Holt who was playing some acoustic tunes. I thought he sounded and looked familiar, and I later confirmed that I had seen him previously at the Tribeca venue in Manchester as part of one of the Dot to Dot festivals. Despite a pretty good memory of previous performers, it is an ongoing occupational hazard when witnessing the artists again in a completely different setting from the first time I encountered them.

Just off the M60 and within walking distance of the town centre there is a large retail park called Portwood. It has the usual ‘delightful’ retail outlets but has been enhanced recently with the addition of an M&S Food Hall, though a second mortgage is sometimes required to shop there!

Also, there is a branch of Dunelm where shortly after we relocated I had to navigate the traffic to make two visits in one day, as I had a ‘middle age shout out’ of having to return some curtains as I had measured them incorrectly.

Whilst I was searching through the tsunami of choices the curtains must have read my rare grumpy mood and all decided in unison to collapse on the floor around me, causing me to utter the phrase ‘For F£$%’s Sake’ rather loudly before stomping off in a ‘Piers Morgan leaving the ITV Studio’ style strop to the nearest lavatory to calm down. Not my finest moment, but undoubtedly my finest ‘Dunelm’ moment!

Arden Arms. Image Credit pubgallery.co.uk

As you head back into town, you cross the main drag at what surely has to be the slowest pedestrian crossing in the whole of Cheshire and if you swing a left on Millgate adjacent to Asda you reach Stockport Arden Arms. This Grade II listed olde-worlde pub was built in 1815 as a replacement for Ye Blew Stoops, a coaching inn that dates all the way back to 1650. It is believed to be the oldest hostelry in the centre of Stockport and there used to be five large inns in that vicinity, but the Arden Arms is now the sole survivor.

There must have been some nefarious activities being undertaken there back in the day as it used to have a secret passage that enabled punters to flee from any danger and which led them through a tunnel to the nearby St Mary’s Church. I cannot envisage anyone taking that route would then have stopped a while in the church to repent!

The story goes is that the original builder of the Arden Arms, George Raffald Junior, used to hide in the nearby trees to catch any would-be burglars and the cellar was used to store bodies during influenza outbreaks. The original stables that date back to Ye Blew Stoops days can still be seen in the beer garden.

Arden Arms beer garden which the stage normally located at the end of the room. Image Credit facebook.com

My initial visit there was to grab some lunch, at which point I identified that they stage live music every weekend. Thus, in September 2024 Uncle George and I made a pilgrimage there on a Saturday night and discovered that the small indoor pub opened into an unexpectedly large and very impressive outdoor space, with half of the area being covered in front of the stage. Thankfully it was dry and reasonably mild on our visit, but I did think that the heated sheltered space would be a godsend in the winter months.

On stage were Blues with a Feeling, a Manchester five-piece blues band named after a track of that name performed by Little Walter. They provided a pleasing blast of 1960’s Chicago blues inspired sound.

Manchester Venues 133 to 134

The Manchester Retro Bar is located on Sackville Street, at the other end of Charles St from the Joshua Brooks pub and Factory 251 venue. It is situated underneath the train line at the mid-point between Oxford Road and Piccadilly. It is actually listed under the auspices of Manchester University as it resides in their North Campus area which houses the school of Electrical and Electronic Engineering. It is close by Vimto Gardens where the unusually large Vimto bottle and associated fruit is housed, which can clearly be seen when scooting past on the train.   

Vimto Gardens. Image Credit mikkitiamo.com

It was originally called the Swinging Sporran, which was an archetypal biker’s rock bar. Due to its proximity, UMIST students also frequented, and it was the site of very early sets by the Chemical Brothers, who at the time were called the Dust Brothers. The Retro Bar has a modernist vibe and would not feasibly look out of place within a 1990’s housing estate as it is essentially a pub built into a car park!  Gill and I stayed once at the hotel next door, now called Pendulum, in the days of affordable hotels in Manchester before they skyrocketed to the London prices now in place. 

The Retro has a bar area at the ground level where they once filmed a concert scene in the Cold Feet TV series when John Thomson played drums for his son’s band. Downstairs is a 120 capacity club and live music venue which hosts regular shows. The Retro Bar closed for a spell in 2017 but was subsequently reopened later that year under the name of Hive. Perhaps living up to its original name I did discover that in the last couple of years Tiffany and Spear of Destiny’s 40th anniversary tour took place there with Kingmaker scheduled for September.  

Retro Bar. Image Credit trustinns.co.uk

I had walked past the venue many times and noticed there was a live band scheduled to play on 28/02/13 when I was in town. Thus, after a Joy Formidable show at the Ritz I dragged Uncle George along to grab the opportunity to pay a visit prior to heading up to Piccadilly for the last train. The act that night was a local combo called Paper Tigers.  

My second and only other visit was as the first venue of the Dot-to-Dot multi venue wristband event on 24/05/19. The act that afternoon was a 3-piece from Cheadle called Elephant and the Rider. They had an indie angular sound and had only issued a couple of EPs at that stage. They have just recently released a couple of further singles which are starting to garner some radio airplay and interest from BBC Introducing.

If you travel further down Sackville Street across Whitworth St West, you reach Manchester Tribeca located in the area of that name which skirts both Chinatown and the Gay Village much as it does in the original incarnation in New York. The literal translation of Tribeca is Triangle below Canal. This was our second location of the same Dot to Dot event referred above.

In a continuation of the attempted New York replication, the bar is multi-tiered with a mezzanine area by the entrance with comfy sofas then onto a raised area by the bar. Downstairs, in a bizarre twist you will find a lounge bar with real beds, appropriately named B.E.D! They also have additional spaces called Blue Lounge and Purple Lounge and there are regular DJ sets at the weekend running into the wee small hours.

Tribeca Bar. Image Credit licklist.co.uk

When we visited, we grabbed a stop in the upper bar with a view down to the makeshift stage which was located in front of the huge bay windows with the afternoon sun filtering through, it created a bonny vista.

There was a decent local singer/songwriter called James Holt playing. He had a challenging start to his life as he was diagnosed with bilateral moderate to severe hearing loss at the age of four. However, he didn’t let this define him by subsequently graduating with a first-class honour’s degree and MA in Music Composition at the University and Salford and then launching a musical career. He has recorded at Abbey Road Studios and has been cited as ‘fresh and exciting to listen to’ by the producer Brian Eno.