I was planning to be open today but I am still not well – opened yesterday and am much worse today, so think it’s wise to try to get better! I am sorry for any inconvenience. Tom the Philosopher will be in tomorrow, and hopefully I will be much better by Tuesday. And we will be open on Sundays through the spring and summer, all being well. Hard to lose another day’s takings so it’s not something I’ve taken lightly, but I think it’s for the best both for our customers and me! Here’s a new photo of Bob Dylan to make up for it.
Of course we are very grateful for all your book donations. Well, not quite all of them, but we are grateful that you think of us when you are looking for places to take unwanted books! However, if you have a lot of books to bring, do phone first to check that we’re open.
Please don’t leave books on the pavement outside. I know it’s frustrating if you find us closed, but it’s pretty rare. We were closed yesterday because I was ill; I came in today, still ill but a little better, to find several boxes of books that were left yesterday. The kind people at the shop next door had put them under cover – thankfully there is a bit of cover nearby. But leaving books outside the door is fly-tipping, which is illegal. And of course it leaves books open to the weather and wildlife (rats have taken up residence on/under the traffic island across the road!). So it’s not good on any level.
Please take them back with you if you find us closed.
Our opening hours and contact details are here on the website and on our social media pages.
But do keep bringing us your books! We and the charities we support are delighted when you do.
Sorry to say that we are closed today, Friday 3 March – I am bad a-bed with a shawl on, as an old colleague used to say! Just a nasty cold, but had forgotten how grim they can make you feel – haven’t had one since before the pandemic. I will be back tomorrow come what may – can’t afford to miss a Saturday! – and open Sunday too. Apologies for any inconvenience.
My last post was a very sad one – I am slowly coming to terms with the fact that no one gets why I am so upset nor gets what the whole live music at the Tree House thing is all about. Grief comes in waves – sounds melodramatic, but I haven’t felt this low in a very long time. It has made me rethink my friendships.
But it’s not at all the end of my enthusiasm and support for the musicians I will no longer be hosting. I will do my best to continue supporting them in other ways: sharing their music, sharing their tour news, and playing them on my radio show.
You may not have heard my radio show – I have been doing it for four years but have very few listeners! It’s on our local community radio station here in Kenilworth, Radio Abbey, which broadcasts from the Kenilworth Centre, as part of its community output and support. The Kenilworth Centre is a charity, focusing on provision of facilities and events for young people but in practice offering a lot more. It’s one of the three charities the Tree House supports on a monthly basis.
My radio show is called Shakespeare in the Alley, which some will recognise as a reference to Bob Dylan’s song Stuck Inside of Mobile with the Memphis Blues Again: ‘Shakespeare he’s in the alley With his pointed shoes and his bells Talking to some French girl Who says she knows me well…’ I try to talk about books as well as playing the best in contemporary folk music, and my definition of folk is broad. The show’s title brings together literature and music and one of the things I always love is music that references books.
I also play other things that I love – Bob and also Nick Cave feature regularly, along with other songs from bygone decades. Book chat is sporadic and largely unsuccessful…I talk about what I’ve been reading and encourage use of libraries, mainly. I keep trying to start a Radio Abbey book club, maybe this will be the year. Radio Abbey is an internet station, so you can listen from anywhere – my preferred way to listen is via the TuneIn app on my phone through my bluetooth speaker, but you can go direct from the website or via your smart speaker. Shakespeare in the Alley is on a Thursday morning from 10-12, and then later on Mixcloud if you can’t listen live. You can also find lots of old shows on Mixcloud.
Let me know if you’re listening! Both the show and Radio Abbey have Facebook pages, and Radio Abbey is also on Twitter and Instagram. Happy to take requests too!
But mostly I use it to highlight and promote and give airplay to the wonderful contemporary folk musicians who work so hard against the odds, bringing beautiful live music to small venues around the country. If you see live music happening near you, get a ticket and go! It often costs hundreds of pounds to see major music acts in stadiums and arenas, but for £10-£15 you can see some truly wonderful live music in a much more intimate setting.
So – if you like the music we have hosted at the Tree House over the last 10 years, give Shakespeare in the Alley a whirl!
My previous posted highlighted the two live music gigs we have coming up in the Spring – Iona Lane on 27 April and Sam Sweeney on 6 May. These will be our last gigs – well, there is one more that was half way through being booked so I will see how that shapes up, but no more.
It was a very tough decision. I have tried to stop hosting live gigs before and always gone back to it – the main reason being that I love the musicians we host and want to support them as much as I can, albeit in a very small way. We are a convenient location for a musician on tour, and at the very least the fee we pay can help cover expenses on the road as they travel north to south or east to west. I have been hosting live music for nearly 10 years – we opened on 26 July 2013 with a live concert of jazz and storytelling.
I think the reason it feels different is that in the past I have given up because it all felt too much, but now I am giving up because I want to. It IS too much for one person – I don’t think anyone really knows the ins and outs of regular bookings unless you’ve done it, and doing it entirely alone for 10 years has been exhausting and, above all, intensely lonely. I can cope with the exhaustion but can no longer cope with the loneliess. I get lovely help on the nights of the gigs, don’t get me wrong, and a few people have been incredibly supportive on that front much of the time. I have also hosted a lot of them on my own – which involves setting out chairs, moving bookcases, providing food for musicians, making sure musicians have everything they need, checking tickets, dealing with people spilling drinks and more. I am so thankful for the times when others have helped with this practical stuff.
But the process of booking and dealing with all the emails and the stress of making sure we sell all the tickets (we have been out of pocket several times, the best we hope for is to break even in terms of paying the musicians) is something I have always done without anyone to bounce stuff off, talk anything over with, share in any way, and I don’t want to do it any more. I have even stopped enjoying the evenings themselves as much as I used to, because I spend the whole evening full of the remnant of how hard it’s all been and no one there who has a clue about how I feel about any of it.
People have spoken about the legacy of the pandemic and lockdowns in various ways, and the way it has left me feeling is that I am hugely reluctant to do things in the evenings. I miss that first lockdown, which was heaven to me – I make no apology for that, I like many introverts live all our lives under the pressure of a sociable society, and I hate it. But I am now determined to spend more time at home – I used to spend almost every evening at the bookshop – and think very carefully about what else I might put on in the evenings.
It’s been an indescribable privilege to host these events and to meet the musicians and to listen live to their incredible music in our tiny venue – we can seat 32 max. We used to be able to seat 40 but now we have a treehouse! Live music in an intimate space with a good acoustic is the best. And we have built up a great audience – a strong core of regulars and always new people. Audiences have been fabulous. There have been very poorly attended gigs, but fewer in recent years, and the atmosphere is always lovely. They laugh at the jokes, they applaud and cheer, they sing along when invited to do so (and sometimes when not invited) and it’s been a lovely thing to have in our little town.
So thank you to all those who have come to our gigs, and to all those musicians who have stopped off in Kenilworth on their national tours and enriched our lives and the life of the bookshop with their music and their personalities. I am heartbroken, despite saying I wanted to give up, utterly heartbroken, it’s a kind of grief. But I will cherish all the memories, and I won’t say never again. Our lovely landlords have just offered us a new 6-year lease (the lease was due to run out in April), so Kenilworth is stuck with the Tree House a bit longer, and maybe I will find some new way to host live professional music. We still have our open mic for local musicians who want to come and play a song or two. The rest I leave to the amazing Temperance in Leamington and Rye Piece Barn in Ettington – two fabulous venues who are able to cope better than me, chiefly through having a team.
Come and hear Iona Lane at the bookshop and Sam Sweeney at the United Reformed Church, to celebrate the end of this very special chapter in the life of the bookshop and of our little town. Book tickets here. (There will be some available in person at the bookshop soon.)
People have been asking me if we have any live music gigs booked, and I thought maybe I hadn’t put them on the website…but I have. And on our social media channels. If you want to know what we’re up to, look at the website – same for any business! I see people asking for info on the Kenilworth Vibes Facebook page about all sorts of stuff and they don’t seem to think of looking at a business’s website…
Anyway, we have two fabulous gigs – check out the details on our Live Music tab. Iona Lane on 27 April at the bookshop, Sam Sweeney on 6 May at the United Reformed Church on Abbey Hill so that we can have a bigger audience. Tickets are selling – so some people are seeing our posts! – and in fact we’ve already sold 71 tickets for Sam Sweeney, so do book if you want to come.
Advance booking helps enormously – gigs do get cancelled if not enough people book in advance.
So – hope to see you at one or both of the gigs, if you are local! They are both going to be fabulous – do read the blurb on the Live Music page (see the top of the screen for the different tabs).
We are closed from Christmas Day to New Year’s Day inclusive.
In the week beginning Monday 2 January, we are only open on Monday and Thursday.
From Monday 9 January we are back to normal – but not open on Sundays in January.
Apologies for any inconvenience – I need a bit of a holiday! Plus I am convinced we as humans are meant to hibernate. I love winter, but only because of the chance to hunker down when it’s cold and dark and drink coffee, read books, watch films. That’s what I will be doing. I rarely have the opportunity to take time off, and never on Saturdays, so this is my opportunity.
Sunday opening will return, I haven’t decided yet whether that will happen in February or not, it will certainly happen from March onwards. Sunday opening has been great! But again, it’s good to have a few Sundays at home. I will keep you posted.
I hope you have enjoyed Christmas festivities, and wish everyone a happy New Year – filled with lots of secondhand books, of course!
I keep forgetting to add events to this website. We will soon have a shiny new website and hopefully my excitement about that will encourage me to update it more often!
But we have wonderful live music next Saturday, 19 November. We haven’t hosted many gigs this year, and I am still in two minds about the whole small venue thing, but the gigs we’ve had since the lockdowns have been fabulous. There are still some tickets left for this upcoming one, so do come if you can.
We have Wes Finch coming – an old friend of the Tree House and one of the most talented singer-songwriters around, for my money. He’s bringing with him Amit Dattani, who came once before, and is also wonderful. It’s going to be a great night! And all for £10. You can buy tickets here.
As well as being a fantastic songwriter, Wes is a genius at setting other people’s poetry to music, from Shakespeare to Philip Larkin and various poets in between. Here is his lovely setting of Philip Larkin’s Trees.
And here is a lovely original song from Amit Dattani – just beautiful.
Hope you can make it if you’re local! Starts 7.30pm, doors 7ish. More info at the Eventbrite link.
We have been open on Sundays during July and August, and I intended it to be a temporary summer thing. But it’s been lovely, and I am going to keep opening on Sundays up to Christmas – chance for me to get on with all those Advent calendars too! We’ll see how popular it is in the cooler, darker days, but you can grab a coffee in Forrest or Coffee on the Corner and come and browse, or buy a book and take it a cafe to read – lovely Sunday thing to do! Dogs are welcome, so you can call in while you’re walking the dog or on your own walk to Abbey Fields. Or just come and browse – excellent idea on a relaxing Sunday.
To celebrate, here are my beloved Nick Cave & The Bad Seeds with their song Skeleton Tree, which opens with the words Sunday morning… Love this live version, and Nick dancing towards the end is just lovely.
The Tree House Second-hand Bookshop 