The Seaside Soul Club
"a potted history"

The Seaside Soul Club came together over a few pints at the Upstairs Downstairs Pub in Morecambe June 2003.

The MHP (Morecambe Hat Posse) was formed at Caister weekender in 1994, which forms a number of the Clubs Committee Members (or Crew). Other Crew members, are like-minded soul fans of the Morecambe area who over many years have toured the length and breadth of the UK searching out soul music. The idea to reduce travel and to promote our own night was the main agreement at that first meeting.

The primary aim of those who attended was simply to get some soul music played. To do this the idea was to create monthly soul nights where the Crew, many of them avid record collectors and DJ's, could play their sounds. If anyone came to listen, hey that'll be a bonus.

Over the previous years Morecambe and the surrounding area had seen many organised soul nights come and go. For those who may remember there were some classic all-nighters and concerts at the Central Pier through the 70's and 80's until the Pier's structural demise in the late 80's.

The Carleton Inn, which still operates today took over the soul mantle and ran many of the all-nighters during the late 80's. There's also been a host of Northern Soul nights dotted around the district throughout the 90's, and indeed over the last few years the area is seeing the return of soul in Morecambe with the Carleton now back hosting regular Northern Soul all-nighters.

Due to the diverse make up of the Crew, in respect of their differing soul tastes, it was pretty obvious to us all that this could not just be a Northern night. With no venue in the area with two rooms to spilt out the soul tastes of your average soulie, The Seaside Soul Club would therefore simply play, and we continue to play "The Full Scope of Soul Music" at all its Club nights.

The clubs first Soul night was in August 2003, and as luck has it, Mick Dennison was asked to review the night for our local newspaper, we have his "Visitor" piece on the site here if you'd like to have a read for nostalgic purposes.

Over the next few years the lads worked very hard together to make the soul nights as memorable and as accessible as possible - what more could you get for our £2.00 entry and free CD!

We continued to promoting the club extensively, raising our profile in and around the local area and across the country, by DJ'n or simply doing what we enjoy best- attending soul nights while quaffing a few liquid refreshments and meeting like minded folk as we go.

The monthly soul nights at our home of Upstairs Downstairs continued to grow over the next few years with attendances peeking at 170 and with Club nights gaining a regular 80/100 soul lovers a month.

There were trips a plenty organised as well to a number of soul nights in the local area, such as Fleetwood, Blackburn and Lytham, and these included some very special nights which I'm sure are placed in the memory banks of many who traveled with us.

With the establishment of our first website in December 2004, and the Clubs image branding confirmed, the visibility of the Club and its DJ's also now started to increase, and our reputation on the soul scene for playing quality soul music from all soul genre's was also becoming established, confirmed by the reactions of our first and future Club Promo CD's that were produced for the first 25 to enter on our Club nights.

Having had so much fun traveling to other soul clubs and to a number of weekenders, it was decided in 2006 that we should try our hand at hosting a festival? Well, we have the hotels, the beach, the fantastic view here in Morecambe, not to mention a number of pubs all within short distance of each other. All in all not a bad place to take a break for a few days.

So carrying on the momentum we decided to give it a go.

Working to a £00.00 budget but with all our soul friends from across the country we established the National Soul Collective and begged, borrowed and begged some more to get the inaugural North Lancs Soul Festival off the ground. In May 2007 we had a ball.

This we think was one of the first entirely "free" weekend soul festivals to be established on the scene, and this "coming together" has certainly contributed to the festival and it's friendly and open atmosphere where ego's and arrogance are firmly left on the M6 to be collected by their owners on their return home.

However the up's that had been witnessed about the Club in the last few years suddenly take a crashing reverse, as our friends and partners, Mick & Sharon Donolan decided to leave the Upstairs Downstairs pub.

With no buyer in sight the Club started it's search for a new venue, a venue which would be very hard to replace. We just felt so at home at the Uppy, it certainly had what you want for a venue; a good medium sized room, tidy dancefloor, terrific atmosphere, good sound and a handy balcony area for barbeques and for the smokers.

With only a few months out and we were back playing again as we arrange a number of nights at Mick Dennison's York Hotel. Although the York wasn't the perfect venue for a Saturday Night Soul Evening, we still had some really enjoyable evenings during the summer of 2008.

Now in 2009 the Club is on its way back to it's best, with a fantastic partnership with Sean O'Connor of Smokey O'Connor's in Morecambe. This ex working men's club taken over by Sean is now getting a new lease of life thanks to the efforts of Sean and his colleagues, with may events now scheduled for it's gem of a first floor function room which the Club also now uses on a regular basis.

So here we are in May 2009, on the brink of hosting our 3rd North Lancs Soul Festival at the end of the month and with a new venture for this summer as we take our special brand of soul across the River Lune to Lancaster for the first time, with 4 initial nights at another venue with a soul history, The Phoenix Club.

As we look to celebrate our 6th Anniversary in October this year, it's most pleasing that for all the up's, down's, and dummy's that have been spat, the nine of us are all still together, and still lovin' what we do, and still working for the common goal of "Bringing You Sunshine", through the power of soul music.

We simply look forward to more and more!

Here's hoping.

Jason
Seaside Soul