Issue 1A DarrylCalvertProduction2016

Magazine

At The Old Chapel in Hunslet there lives an organisation named after a popular fictional character, who, unlike it’s namesake is anything but old and saggy, and who is in fact alive and vibrant and not very old at all.Cloth Cat begun life in 1998 and was incorporated the following year after the oblong projectwas required to leave it’s residence at The Carr Mill buildings.A group of four people decided that a new similar project was needed and so Cloth Cat was born.Mike Jolly, one of the four, Is the project co-ordinator at Cloth Cat and works tirelessly

The open mic night at The Chemic Tavern in Woodhouse is a weekly event and people of any age, skill, talent or genre of art are more than welcome to take part and every first Thursday the evening is joined with a profes-sional group who occasionally donate thier takings to Cloth Cat.Pictured above emma performing in front of an audience for the very first time .

Here on the left is a local folk group who were very good and had a range of songs ans well as instruments, the guy playing either violin/fiddle or balalika with influences from eastern europe as well as home grown.

along with the other three and music industry professionals to keep Cloth Cat alive and afloat putting on cabaret shows, open mic nights, relentlessly seeking out donatores, and making applications to lottery fund-ing and the like.But that is not all that goes on there, the main point of the project is to give people, who would otherwise be precluded, a chance to create music, learn aspects of the music industry and change thier lives for the better.They run, with funding through W.E.A, courses such as music production, Guitar, songwriting and many others as well as providing high quality studio recording and rehearsal facilities with up to date technology and industry level production techniques and producers.........

Jo-Jo pictured right, was the compere for the night,and the enthusiasm she exuded really gee’d up the crowd, not that they needed much, for the arrival on stage of the wonder-ful Biscuithead & The Biscuit Badgers, a four piece band that incorporate theatrics, humour, and musical genius into thier astoundingly good set, as you can see from the crowd shot, much jollity was had by all.

Cloth Cat up in 1998 although we were incorpo-rated in April of the following year. The project

came after Oblong, that Mike Jolly was involved in before, was made to leave the mill buildings they

were in. It had been great with a rehearsal studios, artist’s workspaces and a resource centre and was

very underground despite being on the fourth floor. the place had a great buzz with a real mixture of

creative people. Once they left Carr Mills which was developed in to student flats, the project found it

difficult to hold on to the arts and music, the music more so. At this point, a group of four of them de-

cided to set up a music project outside Oblong. Orig-inally they wanted this to be a community recording

studio but they couldn’t find suitable funding for equipment and premises to do this. They wanted the

project to be something which would help people and build up their skills. With a couple of the group

proficient in music technology They raised money through grants to buy 5 imacs, along with Cubase and Reason software and Mike went to a couple of the community centres to see if They could run a

couple of free courses which They did and were very popular. The name choseen came, like many band names, after many hours of deliberation trying to find the one thing they could all agree on and that captured the essence of what they wanted to do. The previous evening, there had been on Channel 4, the

top 100 children’s TV programmes and Bagpuss had come out on top. They couldn’t call themselves ‘Bagpuss’ so they called thmselves the nearest thing, Cloth Cat, and thought that it would appeal to lots

of people living in Leeds 6, where they were based at the time.

Cloth Cat has never aimed to propel bands to stardom, but just give them the first foot on the ladder and get people enjoying the creative process of writing, playing and recording music as well as using it to help people in so many other ways developing personal and technical skills. I’d like to think that we did have a hand in helping some of the bands and acts which did come through Cloth Cat including Victor Pope, The Navigantes, Fulibulbous (later China Shop Bull) , Roguish Stranger, Georgette Hill, Kaiser Cheifs and 10,000 Things. It would be nice to think that there are other musicians, DJs and practitioners who have gone on to be successful that we don’t know about yet. From the feedback we receive, music and Cloth Cat have had a major hand in helping many people to find employment, get in to further educa-tion whilst continuing to make music We were lucky to have tutors on board who had been involved in the music industry at a higher level such as Si Denbigh, Stewart Coxhead and Paula Temple”. Mike Jolly.