Tag: Lancaster Library

Lancaster Venues 14 to 16

My tale of our debut attendance at the 2023 Lancaster Music Festival continues as we left the Pub and traversed down Market Street to the historic Lancaster Market Square which dates all the way back to 1193. On one corner of the square resides the Lancaster City Museum, which is contained within a Grade II listed building. This sits alongside Lancaster Library where I have previously attended many fine gigs as they were the forerunner of the utterly commendable Get it Loud in the Library scheme.

Lancaster Market Square with the Library building to the right. Image Credit Geograph Britain and Ireland.

On the festival day this was one of the central hubs with food stalls selling tasty Indian snacks that you didn’t know you needed until you sampled them. There was a stage located on the square and the first band we saw had the distinctly unappetising moniker of Do You Like Worms? They are an acoustic duo who are based in Lancaster and home record their own material.

The second act was the Baybeat Street Band, they evolved from and are the longest standing project of the More Music education and music charity. This initiative is an Arts Council organisation and was established in 1993 with the primary purpose of delivering workshops, training, performances and festivals across the Northwest of England area.  The carnival band play regularly at festivals around the local area and around the country and have a pot pourri of influences including Brazilian, Cuban, North African and Caribbean sounds.

It was a rather Baltic day, and emergency visits were made by members of the festival crew to Mountain Warehouse and Primark to purchase various forms of funky knitwear to keep the icicles at bay. The latter named shop is located in the Lancaster Marketgate Shopping Centre and next to their entrance the full personnel of the Haffner Orchestra were all squeezed in place to play a novel afternoon set.

Haffner Orchestra performing at the festival. Image Credit thebayhealthfestivals.org.uk

They are Lancaster’s very own symphony orchestra, and they are composed of a mix of amateurs and professionals from across the region.  They undertake three regular shows each year however they generously included an additional performance this year specifically for the festival. Alex Robinson is the current musical director and conductor who also plays a suite of musical instruments himself, but this was his debut performance at the helm.  

The content of their performance related to Mozart’s 40th symphony in G Minor where they broke the music down into components and crafted it all back together alongside periodic commentary updates from the conductor. Additionally, members of the audience, many children, were offered the rare and exciting opportunity to literally take up the baton and conduct the orchestra themselves.

I looked around at one point and identified that all my crew had disappeared, so took the chance and headed off on my ‘Jack Jones’ to locate a bonus gig and venue as there were so many to be picked off. So, I headed off again further up Market Street followed by a right turn into Penny Street and after Shoe Zone took a left into Diggles Ffrances Passage, one of the many old ginnels in Lancaster.

This leads out onto Gage Street directly in front of the Tap House pub on the right and the Lancaster Collegian Club on the left.  The building is home to a private working men’s clubthat can be hired for functions,and I have walked past many times without a reason to visit, but today I did! Up a set of stairs brought you to the traditional function room with trestle tables. On stage was a hometown singer/songwriter Nicky Snell who was undertaking her second set of the day. Nicky is also an artist and chairs songwriting workshops alongside exhibiting her paintings.

Lancaster Collegian Club. Image Credit whatpub.com

Lancaster Venues 11 to 13

When attending a gig at Lancaster Library earlier this year we made our first visit to the new Tite and Locke bar on the station platform and noted a poster outlining the upcoming 13th edition of the Lancaster Music festival which piqued our interest. Thus, it came to pass on 14/10/23 that a group of seven made our debut appearance at the event.

It is an excellent well attended free festival taking place over three days over the weekend (Friday through to Sunday). It is a very wide ranging encompassing over 50 venues across the city including events within schools, musuems, theatres, cinemas, busking stops and also in a novel addition, even gigs taking place on a floating mobile stage on a barge on Lancaster Canal! The local legends Lovely Eggs headlined the festival on the Sunday night.

After an initial meeting and whistle wetting in the Tite and Locke at 1pm, we left the station and headed down to the nearby historic Lancaster Castle which I had not visited for a very long time. There was a decent crowd already gathered at this early hour and there were a suite of merchandise and food and drink stalls scattered around and there were festival programmes on sale.

Lancaster Castle. Image Credit melodromestage.co.uk

They had also set up a small outdoor stage within the castle grounds embossed in medieval ‘Game of Thrones’ style and named it the Melodrome Stage and a band called 2nd Leg were performing. They were a vibrant seven-piece combo complete with fiddles, harps and mandolins performing Irish and Scottish jigs and they had evolved from the Irish dance group Absolutely Legless. 

Nearby and standing as a gateway to Castle Hill is the Lancaster Storey Gardens Craic Inn where a stage had been set up in the gardens adjoining the building. The Grade II listed Storey building was constructed in 1887 and funded by local philanthropist Thomas Storey. It was built to commemorate Queen Victoria’s Golden Jubilee and was designed as a creative hub and covers diverse events such as business conferences, films, music and theatrical recitals.

Lancaster Storey building. Image Credit Visit Lancashire

On the outdoor stage we saw the Dundee folk singer Rhuari Campbell play. After playing in many other bands for a few years he was now heading out as a solo artist. There were also bands playing in the grand indoor building setting, but we unfortunately landed between the scheduled sets, so it didn’t allow me to tick this off as visited venue, at least not yet!  

A further short walk away and you arrived at China Street and the established rock venue in town The Pub. The establishment has been around for many years, and I recall visiting as far back as the late 1990’s but had never yet encountered a live act there. On the day they were rotating bands across two stages with Space set up as the headliners.

We landed at Lancaster The Pub Outdoor Stage set up in the beer garden and we shuffled out to there after purchasing an aperitif from the indoor bar. It was extremely busy and reputedly the most well attended venue on the day. On stage were a noisy rock band from Manchester called Luna Market and these kids could play. They were covering 1970’s standards and had a powerful female lead singer and an excellent guitarist, though I think he had played one too many games of ‘Guitar Legend’.

The Pub. Image Credit flickr.com

Whilst I stood there, I had a moment of clarity as I was thinking what more can there be in the world than watching a commendable rock band in an outside space at 3pm on a Saturday afternoon with a cold beer in hand and in attendance with good friends and like-minded punters, sounds like my kind of heaven!