About us

Bringing folk back to East Dulwich
What will the evening be like?
The Goose's music
Floor singers
Venue
Who is The Goose?
How did the Goose get its name?
Would you like to help?

Bringing folk back to East Dulwich

Folk is cool again, and that old stereotype of beardies with pewter tankards and fingers permanently welded to their ears has gone forever - if indeed it ever existed!

It seems a long time since the likes of Martin Carthy and Bert Jansch appeared at the East Dulwich Tavern back in the nineties, and with the huge recent upsurge in interest in all sorts of Folk and Folk-influenced music, we felt the time was right to bring Folk back to East Dulwich.

The Goose is Out! first flew with monthly events in that great space upstairs @ edt where the vibe of Eddie Izzard still lingers (no, he wasn’t on the same bill as Martin Carthy).

We've had some great evenings at the edt, with great artists, and more to come. We are also starting a new evening at Hoopers Bar in Ivanhoe Road, to give the many talented local folkies a longer spot than we are able to at the edt.

What will the evening be like?

Upstairs @ edt

Doors upstairs @ edt will open at 7pm, and you can eat and have a drink while listening to our resident Big Chill DJs Folk2Future. There is a bar upstairs and the edt has specially arranged real ale and cider, with a wider selection of ale at the downstairs bar too.

Food will be available throughout the evening, but we expect that most people will want to eat before the live music starts. The menu may vary, so please check with the edt beforehand on 020 8693 1316 if you would like details.

If you want to sit at a table, it is best to book one in advance from the edt (020 8693 1316). Otherwise you can have a sofa if you bag one early (we're a comfy venue) or there will be chairs in rows too. Please note that seats are not reserved unless you have booked a table, so to be sure of a seat you should come early.

The live music will start at 8pm with great local and non-local floorsingers followed by our booked artist. Then there will be an interval, then more floorsingers and then another set by our main act. This order may occasionally vary.

The live music will finish at 11pm, followed by more chilled DJing from Folk2Future, with a late bar till twelve.

The 176 night bus passes the door, so if you're lucky enough that it drops you off somewhere convenient, you can have a relaxed late evening without worrying about getting home! For details of other transport, see our find us page.

Hoopers Bar

Our local folk evenings at Hoopers will being at 8pm with chilled DJing from Folk2Future to get you in the mood!

The live music will start at 9pm and finish at 11pm, and we will normally have two artists doing an hour's set each, although this may occasionally vary.

The Goose's music

There used to be - maybe still are in some places - heated discussions over what Folk is, or what it "should" be.

Our main criteria are that all our booked artists and floorsingers should be good, and that they should have what could loosely be described as a folk influence.

We will also only book people who we personally like listening to, on the basis that if we do, then probably you will too. We hope you'll come to see people you may not have heard before as well as those you have. That's how we've discovered great music in the past!

Our folkie musical tastes are pretty wide, so we expect to have a real eclectic mix from what some consider "pure" unaccompanied traditional Folk (we both love it) via blues, roots, world to nu folk, twisted folk, electronica, whatever.

As we've said elsewhere, from the hammered dulcimer to the laptop.

If there's someone you'd love to have come to the Goose, let us know, and if we agree we'll try to book them, budget permitting!

Floor singers

We want to encourage floor singers, and particularly local talent (though we will be "importing" to the Goose non-local singers who we know are really good).

However, this isn't a "Singer's Night". People who turn up "on spec" for a spot might be brilliant, or - they might not. If they're not, we feel that isn't fair on an audience which has paid good money for a ticket.

So we have decided that our floorsingers will be people who we already know and love (and the number of those is increasing all the time!)

So if you'd like to come and sing/play at the Goose, and we don't already know you, please send us a link to tracks online we can listen to, or let us have a demo CD - we are always happy to listen! Or tell us where/when we can come and hear you live.

Sorry but we can only afford to pay our headlining artists, though of course you'll get free entry and an appreciative audience!

Venue

The East Dulwich Tavern

You can find details of where the edt is and how to get there on our find us page.

We're sorry that the only access to upstairs @ edt is by stairs, so it is not wheelchair accessible.

Hoopers Bar

Find out more about Hoopers here: www.hoopersbar.co.uk

Who is The Goose?

Nyge is very lovely. He is part of Folk2Future, DJs who play once a month at the Big Chill Bar in Dray Walk off Brick Lane (usually the last Tuesday) and at some of the Big Chill festivals.

Links:

Find out more about Folk2Future
Listen to some Folk2Future music
Listen to some of Nyge's own music: Flapjack Davey music

Oh yeh, he also DJs as Flapjack Davey, forgot that, confusing eh.

One of Nyge's other claims to fame is that he was a member of Knights of the Occasional Table, who brought out such great albums as "Knees up Mother Earth", "Les Elephants du Paradis", "The Planet Sweet" and "John Barleycorn 2000". Yep, that has to be kind of folkie with a name like that . It "explores the rich seam of folk in a more modern context of synthesisers and loops", it says here ....

The Knights also had a session with John Peel (R.I.P.) and their single "Eden" was a single of the week on Radio 1's evening show in the nineties.

Nyge has many other claims to fame but he won't let me tell you them! We won't mention that reversible jacket then, eh, Nyge?

Sue got into Folk way way back in the sixties. She likes to brag that she was at Bert Jansch's first solo concert at St Pancras Town Hall, having sat open-mouthed throughout when she saw him for the first time at that so-atmospheric venue the Fairfield Halls in Croydon (well it was all new then, innit. All that folkie finger-picking stuff.)

Once she'd heard Martin Carthy, that was it really. A folkie for life. In fact Sue and Nyge got together as a result of discovering a mutual (platonic obviously) love of Mr Carthy at a party a couple of years back. How we came to discover it who knows, must have been fate.

Her only other claim to fame is that her slippers Lipp and Lapp have their own MySpace page. Some people think she is completely barking, but that is not true. She only barks sometimes, but is quite good at it. If you ask her nicely she might give you a demonstration.

Oh no, I can't resist it ..... here are Lipp and Lapp:

Lipp and Lapp's MySpace page!

How did the Goose get its name?

A koan is a riddle which cannot be solved by the mind.

A tiny newly-hatched gosling is put into a large glass bottle whose narrow neck is just large enough for it to enter. It lives in the bottle until it is a fully grown goose.

The riddle is: How can the goose be released from the bottle, without either breaking the bottle or killing the goose?

The answer is: The goose is out! Please do not ask us to explain this, as we won't :) It cannot be solved by the mind, as we said .....

Oh - and conveniently, Sue already had the domain name registered, and of course the edt is right opposite Goose Green ..... plus we found some nice Goose pix on a copyright-free clipart site .....

Would you like to help?

As you can imagine, setting up and running the Goose is very time-consuming, particularly for newbies like ourselves! We already have some brilliant helpers, but anybody who could spare some time to put round flyers and posters (particularly outside the East Dulwich area) and help on the door or with the sound on the night would be welcomed with open arms!

Please contact us if you think you could help!