Cloth Cat

Some Of Cloth Cat’s Many Lives

Isn’t it a pleasure, when you’re anywhere a batch of flyers is in reach and some are those Cloth Cat cards? – colourful and inventive with something good to tell you. Cloth Cat has been bashing away as a musical charity in the Woodhouse and Hyde Park area for nearly ten years now and they’d like to go further with a message that’s still worth putting about.

If a musical charity sounds like a retirement fund for old and empty musicians, then just think the opposite and you’ve got Cloth Cat. It’s a project founded in 1999 and based round free music courses for anyone aged 16 and upwards who might benefit from expressing themselves in a musical way. There’s instruction on the music business itself (both in the sense of explaining it and the possibility of contacts with the mainstream industry through old friends of the scheme); music journalism; Let Us Gig - stagecraft and performance; sound engineering live; DJing; Sing YOUR Song (vocal development); songwriting; setting up a record label; setting up a home studio; and getting technical know-how in Cubase, Reason and Ableton.

Something else you’re going to find on the info cards is two vital names in the Cloth Cat story : Mike Jolly who’s in charge of things and WEA (Workers’ Education Authority) which since its first involvement in 2003 has been so helpful with funding Cloth Cat’s growth over the years. Another big help is Leeds Met Uni, whose interest in the project has taken the form of generous help with equipment. Ex-students provide much of the lecturing on the Cloth Cat courses, and substantial names such as Si Denbigh and Stewart Coxhead have been a firm backbone to the structure.

To find out more I met Mike Jolly at the Chemic Tavern just off Woodhouse Street, where the magnificent licensee Ruth Edwards has long been a blessing to musicians. This pub, along with a nearby office and various local studio facilities, is a Cloth Cat meeting place, home to the weekly open mic, and within easy reach of TJ’s Bar for larger audiences. Before 7pm the first stirrings of preparation were underway for another Thursday evening of rather good quality entertainment in the Chemic’s back room; and one Cloth Cat veteran, Suleiman, was maintaining contact with the event he used to MC when it was at the Primrose. Suleiman has been something of a creative force in Leeds open-mikery, having established the one at the Royal Park in 1995 – thereby actually doubling the number of open mic venues in Leeds at that time! Even Unplugged Leeds (now Open Mind) had only started the previous year in what was then an almost musicless city centre. Since Cloth Cat’s open mic moved to the Chemic in April compereing has been in the spoon-bending hands and mind-bending phrases of Harrison Richards, an entertainer aka The Perceptionist, and a committed Clothcatian over the years.

Mike Jolly was also open, about his willingness to pour years of his time and energy into serving the cause of Cloth Cat. It wasn’t too much of a surprise when he said now is a hectic time, with courses in their early stages - they begin in September each year, but you’re welcome to make an approach whenever the need hits you. After a helpful chat he dashed away to his next meeting; three hours later when we met again he was still running about non-stop, and continued to come across as an unflappable guy with vigour to spare.

Mike Jolly’s work for the Woodhouse area started well back in the nineties at the Oblong Arts Centre; and he’s been involved in Hyde Park Unity Day from its beginning. Even as a non-musician himself, his most urgent belief is that musical involvement brings the right kind of life to areas that are in some ways neglected or even thought of as a bit dodgy - when really they’ve got a vibrancy that can be a powerful fuel for good if rightly applied. Mike hopes for a future where Cloth Cat events can start happening in for example Holbeck or Hunslet and other ‘real city’ districts; and that Leeds can organize a Roll of Honour to acknowledge artists who Leeds origins are under-publicised.

Cloth Cat events take on varied forms – hence the proliferation of flyer cards, telling us that currently on the go are Last Band Standing, a six-heat battle of the bands (and solo artists) culminating in 2009; and there’s a forthcoming sampler CD of singer / songwriters who’ve performed at the Chemic and will be recording at 309Studios : and POP Goes The Cat, a Nov 15 fundraiser at TJs when you can be confronted by The Navigantes,The Birdman Rallies, Feluka, Shatner,The Hoover Dams, and The Seven Inches. In time for Christmas there’s to be a no clothes afternoon at the Chemic. Before curiosity overcomes you (and possibly harms the Cat) what’s planned for Sunday 30 Nov is a bring&buy market for bricabrac and music stuff - but not for clothes. And as the courses reach completion there’s always a studio concert with 20 to 30 entertainers showing what they’ve gained from the knowledge and encouragement put their way. Strange to say, an element in short supply seems to be the involvement of those at the younger end of the target age-range, with most participants university age up to mid-20s.

So if you’re anywhere near the Woodhouse and colleges side of this city, you’re not far from something Cloth Cat is doing or about to do. Enjoy being involved – enjoy listening and seeing, enjoy knowing a bit more of what those flyers are telling you, and be glad that such enterprise is around along with all the other very good stuff Leeds offers these days.

John Hepworth