Tag: Lancaster Live Festival

Lancaster Venues 23 to 25

This week I return to the Lancaster Live festival I attended in 2023 to review the final venue visited that year which was Lancaster Tite & Locke. This establishment opened on the northbound platform 3 on Lancaster train station on 8th April 2022. It was named after the original architect and engineer of the station, when that was first built back in 1846.

It is a very cosy welcoming bar with the wooden surrounds and exposed brickwork providing a vintage feel. It has four rooms, the initial containing the bar and the others named as first, second and third class lounges!

Tite and Locke. Image Credit flickr.com

There are 24 beers on tap including the five different variations of the very fine Lancaster Brewery ales, and they also offer a takeaway service in advance of your upcoming journey. There is also a large covered outdoor area where you can watch the trains departing to Glasgow, Edinburgh and the Lake District.   

We had a cheeky head wetter there when we first landed around lunchtime and had a relaxed hour at the end of the day prior to the members of our group jumping onto Manchester and Carlisle trains respectively. We managed to commandeer a large table in front of the small acoustic stage in the bar area.

The first act we saw was local band Diverted Traffic who undertook some cover versions including Johnny Cash’s ‘Folsom Prison Blues’ including the amended line of the day which became ‘Shot a man in Tesco, just to watch him die’!

The other performer was Chris Barlow, who is the Senior Lecturer in Education at the University of Cumbria and has been instrumental in driving forward the Eden Project inspired Morecambe Bay curriculum.

The commendable initiative links to place based learning including staging Glastonbury Festivals at the local Sandylands school featuring live music, songwriting workshop, face painting and weaving workshops. That sounds like a whole lotta fun to me and top trumps the double physics classes in my day!

When he needs what I am sure is a welcome break from academia he transforms by night into acoustic guitar man! He has released two albums, one called ‘Hiroshima Twinkie Sunset over Morecambe Bay’ which has tunes featuring lyrics devised by the afore mentioned Sandylands school pupils.

The other is titled ‘Lunar Landscape’ under his stage name Chris Twinkle containing songs with Half Man Half Biscuit sounding titles such as ‘Hey Jules Verne’ and my personal favourite name of ‘Iggy Pop’s Trousers’!

Iggy Pop. Image Credit madelinex.com

So, then I will move forward two years to Gill and I’s return to attend the 2025 festival. The event itself was initially under a modicum of doubt as the original organisers decided to take a well-deserved year off, but thankfully a separate local co-operative took up the mantle. They did a fine job with the usual 50+ venues in operation over the four days of the weekend.

We decided to avoid the risk of relying on train transport home and bagged a room at the Sun Inn in the centre of the city. This allowed us to have a full day’s gigging on Saturday and a half day on the Sunday resulting in a Jimmy personal best of 37 gigs and 23 new venues!

There obviously had to be the traditional false start to proceedings with our local trains having a meltdown, but this was swiftly resolved by an uber to pick up our connection at Manchester Piccadilly, landing in Stockport about 1pm. Our first port of call was the Lancaster Storey Café, where we attended a gig in the gardens last time, but this was the first event inside the building.

Thus, against the backdrop of cappuccino makers and tempting looking cakes there was a local singer called Grace Dawson performing. Prior to our departure we managed to purloin a programme with valuable schedules contained in the pages within.

Our next destination was the Lancaster Toll House Inn, situated near to the canal. There are records of a public house being in this location since 1820. There then followed many derivations before the Thwaites brewery owners undertook a £2m refurbishment in 2007. It was renamed the Penny Street Bridge Hotel complete with bar, brasserie, courtyard and 28 bedrooms.

Toll House Inn. Image Credit Visit Lancashire

In 2015, it obtained its current name reflecting the fact of its location at the original toll house, At the turn of the 19th century local football teams, even ones like Scotforth and Galgate which are only a couple of miles away, were quantified as southerners and thus charged a toll to enter into Lancaster!

It is a grand old Victorian building, and we saw a three piece self-styled jukebox band called the Beets who were actually playing as a duo on the day. They were exactly as they stated on the tin, by playing any song on request from the audience.  

A postscript this week is I do not think the pictures will display, which could be a pesky AI problem, so I shall endeavour to resolve for next week!

Lancaster Venues 17 to 19

This week I will continue the tale of the Lancaster Live festival which we attended on a brutally cold day in October 2023. After gathering the band back together at the Marketgate arcade a splinter group then formed consisting of Gill, Marcus, Anita and I and off in search of venues we popped. But prior to all of that we grabbed some much needed hot snacks from one of the plentiful stalls around Market Square.  

A small eight tabled restaurant was initially opened above the Palatine in Morecambe before the relocation of the Lancaster Secret Bistro to Sun Street in the town. They took ownership of the building that had previously housed the Sun Café, the tagline described their cuisine as ‘Northern fine dining without the pomp and the faff’. They had a separate area called the Humbug Room, so named because of the ‘Everton Mint’ black and white striped interior.

Lancaster Secret Bistro. Image Credit tripadvisor.co.uk

They opened there in October 2021 and quickly garnered some fine reviews before tragedy struck the following year when the chef and restaurant owner Gavin Riley passed away at the tender young age of 44. The staff vowed to carry on his legacy which they did until its subsequent closure at the end of 2023. The site reopened in May 2024 as a cocktail bar and grill under the moniker Marula Monkey, a Marula I have since discovered is a South African fruit-bearing tree.    

It was a slightly odd choice as a venue because when we entered the act was playing in the corner of a working restaurant room with diners in the middle of enjoying their meal. The lass singing was called Amy Rae and she lived locally and had a strong gospel type voice. Due to the layout and resultant viewing restrictions, we didn’t tarry long before moving on the next venue on the list.

We walked down past one of my favourite pubs in Lancaster, the Sun Inn where they stock the mighty fine Lancaster Brewery beers. Thus, we then arrived out onto Church Street and directly across the road was Lancaster Cappuvino Bar and Restaurant.

The Cappuvino opened its doors in 2019 and is cited as a restaurant and wine bar and the food has received such stellar references, they ended up being winners of a TripAdvisor Travellers Choice Award in 2021. We landed there about 17.00 hours, and the main room was absolutely jam packed, and Anita endeavoured to purchase a beverage at the bar. In a space in the corner a solo artist called James Candlin was playing.

Lancaster Cappuvino, Anita may still be at the bar! Image Credit cappuvino.co.uk

At this point and to feed my ongoing gig venue addiction I shuffled out of the pub door and headed further down the street to Lancaster Crafty Scholar. Originally in that very spot was the Litten Tree which changed into Yates Wine lodge in 2010 before morphing into the current establishment in 2015.

The emporium is owned by the Stonegate Pub company who originally formed in 2010 with 333 pubs but that portfolio has now risen exponentially to around 4500. They also own the Penny Bank and Pendle Witch pubs in town and additionally the Popworld 1980’s retro themed bars.

Lancaster Crafty Scholar. Image Credit opentable.co.uk

The Scholar has an inviting layout in the vein of the Hogshead hostelries. Located near to the main door there was an acoustic musician called Barrett Tones performing. I watched a couple of tunes and then scampered back to the Cappuvino.

Now, as if time had stood still reminiscent of a sci-fi movie script, Anita remained perched at the bar having still not being served. In response to the question I was posed as to where I had been, I replied that I had just been ticking another gig and venue off.  For some inexplicable reason, no discernible surprise was expressed after my response to their query!