January last year, The Southgate Inn Devizes announced Jamsters, a monthly Friday night platform for loose groupings and associations created at their regular jam sessions each Wednesday. On Sunday 2nd August they’ll be celebrating by bringing some of them together for the first Jamsters free festival, aptly, at the Southgate…
A spokesperson for the inn said, “every great music community needs somewhere to begin. For countless musicians across Wiltshire, that place has been The Southgate.”
The Southgate’s Wednesday night jam sessions have been running regularly since Dave & Deborah took over the pub in 2018. It offered a secure space where people of all ages and abilities can come to play and sing.
“These weekly sessions have become far more than an acoustic jam,” they say, “they’ve birthed enduring friendships, inspired songwriting partnerships and helped musicians find the confidence to take their music beyond the pub’s walls to perform full-length gigs, either as soloists or in bands.”
And I know this to be true. I’ve been to a few, though being unable to hold a note, I reject and quiver in fear of any offers of so much as a tambourine! I just love the comradeship, the communal feeling, and the way they take turns to lead, and the improv singalong becomes something magical.
From 12pm onwards on Sunday 2nd August The Southgate presents a lineup of local talent, solo artists who cut their teeth at these sessions, and groups which formed through it.
Pat Ward and Ben Borrill’s celebrated covers duo Matchbox Mutiny and Gordon Thompson and Tim French’s duo Painted by Numbers, both play, along with soloists like the incredible Vince Bell, one third Lost Trade and local legend Jamie R Hawkins, this year’s wonderful breakthrough singer-songwriter Sammi Evans, the lovable Tom Harris, and Byran Davis, a new name to me, but when I get there I predict I’ll say something like, “oh, hey, I do know you,” because that’s the way things roll around here!!
Worthy to note, the lineup is far from the be-all-and-end-all of musicians who’ve been helped by these sessions, but it’s certainly an incentive to get down the Gate, if not just on Sunday 2nd August but anytime for their non-stop musical programme. As if we needed an incentive!!
“It’s about celebrating the pub that quietly made so much of it possible,” they say. “It’s about recognising the importance of grassroots venues at a time when so many are disappearing.”
Yeah, I’m down with that. Particularly when I pause to reminisce on all the brilliant nights we’ve had there, dancing around George the pub dog as he naps front and centre of the performers! Long live The Southgate and those jammy Jamsters; I wish I could hold a note, I can’t even grip fully onto a tenner before the kids swipe it from my hands!!
devizine.com 