LORE at the Puzzle Hall Inn

May blessings, all - here's a quick reminder about this rare intimate show for outstanding West Yorkshire folk troubadour JACK RUTTER @jack_rutterer at the @puzzlehallinn , #SowerbyBridge TOMORROW (Thurs 7 May) - event link in bio. Jack usually graces much larger venues, so this is an amazing opportunity to experience his craft at close quarters, and for FREE ADMISSION (voluntary donations) to boot! As ever, we'll have floor-spots for local singers and musicians, so come along/get involved!!

HEAR YE, HEAR YE: LORE at the @puzzlehallinn , #SowerbyBridge returns this Thursday, and the line-up for the next 3 months is MEGA - details below 👇, links in bio 🔗 Thurs 5 March, 7.30pm SERIOUS SAM BARRETT @serioussam1980yadig Thurs 2 April, 7.30pm NICK HART @mrnickyhart & TOM MOORE @tomoscarmoore THURS 7 MAY, 7.30pm JACK RUTTER @jack_rutterer Every event is free entry, with a pay-what-you-can collection to support the booked artists Each LORE also offers floor spots for local folk singers & musicians So please do come down/get involved as a performer/spread the word by sharing our posts & inviting others/follow @Lore_Folk plus our Facebook page (link in bio)

*TONIGHT (Thurs 2 Apr)*: COME ONE, COME ALL, as @mrnickyhart & @tomoscarmoore play the @puzzlehallinn , #SowerbyBridge, #WestYorkshire (in-between Hebden Bridge & Halifax). Witness perhaps the UK's finest contemporary folk duo in a uniquely intimate & welcoming setting! Please do arrive early to secure attendance ('official' start is 7.30, but you can arrive before then). All LORE shows are free entry, with a pay-what-you-can collection. As well as the main performers, each LORE offers floor spots for local folk singers and musicians - so perhaps come to sing and play, as well as to listen! The Puzzle is a 10 min walk from Sowerby Bridge Station, and Sowerby Bridge enjoys multiple direct trains from Manchester, Leeds, Bradford, Preston etc. Our shows always finish in time for the last 2-3 trains in either direction. Video shot by George Moore, on location in Blackheath, SE London

I'D HAVE YOU PAY ATTENTION AND LISTEN TO MY SONG: This Thursday 2nd April, @mrnickyhart & @tomoscarmoore play the @puzzlehallinn , #SowerbyBridge, #WestYorkshire (in-between Hebden Bridge & Halifax). We're proud of all of our LORE shows, but this one promises to be especially rare & magical - so come and see perhaps the UK's finest contemporary folk duo in such an intimate & welcoming setting! We're already hearing of people planning travel from across the North to be there, so please do arrive early to secure attendance ('official' start is 7.30, but you can arrive before then). All LORE shows are free entry, with a pay-what-you-can collection. As well as the main performers, each LORE offers floor spots for local folk singers and musicians - so perhaps come to sing and play, as well as to listen! The Puzzle is a 10 min walk from Sowerby Bridge Station, and Sowerby Bridge enjoys multiple direct trains from Manchester, Leeds, Bradford, Preston etc. Our shows always finish in time for the last 2-3 trains in either direction. Video shot by George Moore, on location in Blackheath, SE London

Slightly ragged-but-rambunctious clip of me singing (relatively unusually) a shanty at the @gaslampsingaroundmcr takeover during the @manchesterfolk Festival sessions at the @thesmithfieldnq - Many thanks to all who joined in to bring the ship home, and to the legend that is Kit Knight for expert compering/the capturing of this clip*. I started tentatively trad singing just before COVID, and actively since autumn 2023 - but the benefit to my personal and social wellbeing has been COLOSSAL; I wish I'd started 30 years ago, when my love of *listening* to folk music was just beginning, but these things find you when they find you and I'm so grateful to have it in my life now. If you like what you see, and want to get involved in singarounds yourself - join the TownFolk and Hebden Bridge Traditional Folk Singing FB groups if you're in Calderdale (you can also follow @lore_folk_ ); the aforementioned @gaslampsingaroundmcr plus the Traditional Exchange on FB, if you're in Manchester; and if you're anywhere else, check out @folkclubmapuk , and I'm also more than happy to advise on what might be in your area. Remember that the vast majority of sessions also welcome people who just want to listen - so don't fear behind immediately pressed to sing or play - just get down to one, check it out, hopefully like it enough to go back, and see where that leads you. (*I've screen-grabbed it from a Facebook Live broadcast, so apologies for the superfluous relic buttons in the image corners etc)

Room, room, brave gallants, give us room for a... 🥚🎻POST PACE-EGG FOLK SESSION🎻🥚 Friday 3 April, 5-7.30pm The Cross Inn, Heptonstall (above Hebden Bridge, West Yorkshire) Come and join us for a jolly songs and tunes sesh. It was a blast last year, so get ye down to help us embed it as a new part of the vibrant, living Pace Egg tradition for many moons to come!!

Fantastic set by SERIOUS SAM BARRETT @serioussam1980yadig for our March LORE at the @puzzlehallinn last night - many, many thanks to Sam plus all who attended, did floor-spots, contributed to the hat, bought a drink at the bar, told a friend about the show - you're helping independent music and grass-roots venues to survive and thrive. More pics and clips to follow; and a reminder that our next 3 shows are as follows (FB event page links in bio) Thurs 2 April - Nick Hart @mrnickyhart /Tom Moore @tomoscarmoore Thurs 7 May - Jack Rutter @jack_rutterer Thurs 4 June - The Bromleys (@john.bromley.16 , @john.bromley.16 & Jenny) Vid & pic 4 by @jay1970 📸🙏

Quick final reminder about this fab show TONIGHT (Thurs 5 March): for SERIOUS SAM BARRETT @serioussam1980yadig at the @puzzlehallinn , Sowerby Bridge from 7.30pm (free entry/pay-what-you-can collection) Sam is both one of the finest traditional singers, and most accomplished folk guitarists, in West Yorkshire; We also have floor-spots for local singers and performers, so come down and have a listen, and contribute a song, tune, poem, dance, story etc yourself! Please do also share/spread the word - let's support independent music, and incredible, precious grass-roots venues like the Puzzle 🙏✨ 📸: Reece Leung

Intriguing first @thefolkunion #FolkMoot online just now, on the theme of curating folk/lore. Fab 'keynote' responses to host @mike_hankin of @offbeatfilm from both @eliza_dearnley & @elizabethsulis , and excellent contributions from the (virtual) room from @microwavedrama , @fay_hield , @wyrd.folkpod and others - thank you, all 🙏. Really great that @alicemeasommcmahon was able to pick up crucial considerations around *co-curation*, in terms of foregrounding/empowering communities whose practices are being addressed, under-represented voices, paying people for their time, etc - including sharing the great practice embodied through the @porticolibrary 's excellent #WeirdAsFolk exhibition, driven by a 'critical friends' group of community members who were remunerated and supported. Plus also, the importance of fun, folk as something inherently working class and transgressive of hierarchies, etc. Alice and I (@john_milesofsmiles ) would love to see a session soon engaging with the idea of what it means to utilise the language of unions, and what the folk movement can learn from other such forms of collective organisation. Think of it as a May Day match made in heaven...! Happy to offer thoughts if useful. (Sorry for the rubbish image, but we didn't take photos of the wider call because that would have needed the permission of participants)

Deepest thanks Bridget Hayden @notwavingordrowning for a CAPTIVATING set last night, and to all who came braved bleak weather to attend/contributed generously to support the event. Many thanks also to @john.bromley.16 , Hayley, @ian_forsooth_lord and John for the floor-spots performances, and of course to the @puzzlehallinn for its unwavering nurturing of love music. Our next LORE installment is on Thursday 5th March with @serioussam1980yadig - much more info to follow in the coming days!

🚨TONIGHT🚨 LORE at the Puzzle proudly presents BRIDGET HAYDEN Thurs 5 Feb 2026, 7.30pm The Puzzle Hall Inn Hollins Mill Lane Sowerby Bridge HX6 2RF Free entry/'pay what you can' collection for the artists Join us for the first LORE event of 2026 - a rare trad solo show for Bridget Hayden, one of Northern England's finest and most fearless interpreters of traditional song, our events also feature floor-spots for local folk singers and musicians (with priority for new contributors); so please join us, and perhaps join in! Entry to this and most other Puzzle Hall Inn events is free; we also invite voluntary contributions from the audience across the evening to further support the artists that we are hosting. Widely acclaimed as one of 2025's finest folk albums, 'Cold Blows the Rain' by Todmorden's own Bridget Hayden & The Apparitions is an enrapturing wintery pilgrimage through traditional standards including 'Blackwater Side', 'Lovely On the Water' and 'She Moves Through the Fair', traced out in spectral banjo, harmonium and fiddle. These most traditional of songs, learned at her mother's knee and delivered with tender restraint, mark a paradoxically radical departure for Hayden, who has been a key figure of the UK's 'Trans-Pennine Underground' experimental music scene across two decades, including as a member of Vibracathedral Orchestra and the Telescopes, and as a central figure in the Folklore Tapes nexus. 'Bridget Hayden and the Apparitions start the year with traditional songs as heavy as the sodden moors at midnight. They unfurl at a glacial pace, with analogue synths and delicate banjos buoying up Hayden’s deep, measured voice.' Folk Album of the Month, The Guardian 'Like a skeleton tiptoeing through a field of windblown grass.. quietly heart-rending' 4.5/5, Uncut Magazine 'A mist-soaked album of traditional songs... I found myself quite mesmerised, as the songs weaved their subtle magic' 4/5, Songlines

INCOMING: our first LORE event of 2026 is BRIDGET HAYDEN this Thursday 5th Feb at the @puzzlehallinn , Sowerby Bridge. Details below, come down/tell yr pals! 📽️🖤🪕 This clip is from Bridget's performance at End of the Road 2025, featuring her fab band The Apparitions. The Puzzle show will be fully solo, and all the rarer/more mysterious for that. The song here is The Factory Girl(Roud 1659). 📽️ Shot by Will Kirkham (find his [at]godzuks channel on YouTube) BRIDGET HAYDEN (SOLO) + floor spots for local folk singers/musicians Thursday 5 February 7.30pm-close LORE at the Puzzle Hall Inn, Sowerby Bridge Free entry/pay-what-you-can collection Please do add yourself to the Facebook event page in our bio, too...!