Our new regular Wren Folk Club sessions begin on Sunday 30 July, with special guest Chris Foster. It’ll be a relaxed evening of music and song, and floor spots are welcome – just turn up on the night.
Chris was born in Somerset and now lives in Iceland, where he’s one half of the folk duo, Funi. Chris has a long association with Wren Music, and we are thrilled he’s helping us to launch our new folk club.
Marilyn Tucker from Wren Music said: “Chris is making it here specially for our 40th anniversary. He was the director of our very first Baring-Gould Festival in 1999, and he met his now wife, Bára Grímsdóttir, at the festival in 2000. It’s going to be a wonderful evening, and the more people, the merrier.”
For Chris, the restaurant in the Fountain Inn is the perfect setting. Following the pandemic, Chris considered what a sustainable, future live music scene could be like: “For me that could mean smaller intimate scale local events, both indoors (house concerts anybody?), feasts, good old fashioned folk club scale events, and outdoors – garden concerts, campfires, tailor-made performances in special locations in the countryside, and so on.
“I have always really valued the sense of community and sharing that the best of the folk scene has offered. I firmly believe that our music works best at the scale and in the kinds of settings that it grew out of, so let’s see what we can do.”
About his journey in folk music, Chris says: “I first got really interested in traditional folk music as a teenager. It set me on a path – or should I say paths? – that I am still exploring several decades later. It has taken me all over Europe, North America and once, even to China. I have been privileged to meet and hear many great musicians and I have made many friends along the way. It also led to me living in Iceland.”
In 2018, Chris’s track The Life of a Man/Greensleeves, from his 2017 album Hadelin, was nominated in the Best Traditional Track category at the BBC Folk Awards – you can listen to the song via the link.
Watch Chris performing Who Reaps the Profits, Who Pays the Price here.
No need to book. Free to attend, with a cash collection.
This is the first of our new regular Wren Folk Club sessions in Okehampton – watch this space for details of more events.
Yes, but what exactly IS a folk club? Here’s what you can expect …
Folk Clubs are a great chance to see concerts in small and intimate venues. Clubs can book a good selection of famous names as well as local and up-and-coming artists, so they provide an opportunity to see performers up close and personal. As well as featured artists clubs will usually have floor spots where members of the audience can take to the stage for a song or two. Sometimes this is part of an evening with a guest artist, and at other times whole evenings will be given over to this – often known as ‘singers’ nights or ‘open’ nights.
