Wizz Jones at Walthamstow Folk Club

It all happened very quickly yesterday, as I was listening to a Steve Tilston track, Linda Carter mentioned that he was playing Walthamstow Folk Club on the 1st March. Checking the forthcoming gigs I noticed that the legendary Wizz Jones was playing last night and resolved to get to that one if at all possible. It turned out to be not so difficult at all using the W19 bus route so this brings another folk club into range but what was it like?

Well it's a nice enough pub, Walthamstow Folk Club is at The Plough Inn, 173 Wood Street, Walthamstow, London E17 3NU where there are other genres of live music on different nights of the week and the Fullers beer was good. They used to have bottled Dunkertons cider as well but we didn't get around to checking that last night.

I had a feeling I'd bump into somebody I knew, but didn't guess that it would be our friends from Havering Folk Club, Foxen as from last Wednesdays Foxen Night, so that made us feel welcome straight away. The venue is on the ground floor, seperated from the main bar area and although smallish, uses a PA and microphone system with mixing desk. The audience sits in rows of chairs and behaves appropriately without much disturbance from either the bar extension or the rowdy saloon next door.

Wizz Jones himself of course is just a blues guitar playing legend, and played most of my old favourites including Deep River Blues, Nobody knows you when you're down and out and Anji as a tribute to Davy Graham.

Here's that video clip of Wizz Jones with the beatniks in Newquay in Cornwall from 1960