Thursday Night Music Club

Live music in and around Carlton, Nottingham

The Thursday Night Music Club, or TNMC, has been going for many years in various guises and at various locations through it's long history.

It all started when a group of musicians decided that there was nothing in the locality where people could come just for the pleasure of playing music, of any kind, together. Of course in Nottingham's city centre there were settings which allowed people to play but these were often genre specific sessions populated by musicians focused solely on that style and who frowned upon anything outside of that remit. There was also the issue of getting there with your prized instrument too!

The venue with the longest history for the club was The Old Volunteer, 35 Burton Road, Carlton where the landlady, Lorraine, had a history of putting on live music during the week and we were almost the warmup night for a weekend slate of gigs.

Sadly, Lorraine and her husband Kev, had to give up the pub when it became too expensive to continue to run and the Pub Co behind the premises decided, along with the incoming tenants, that loud music could not continue and they removed all of the alterations that had been created to try to keep sound from leaking out.

At this time, the people still frequenting the session didn't want to give up on the idea and found a receptive welcome at what was at the time, The Blue Note on Cavendish Road (formerly the Cavendish pub). It was also decided that one of our group's idea to create a 'brand' around the idea would be a good thing and so a Facebook group was created (Check it out at Link ). Later on still we created this web site and also a presence on Twitter.

It wasn't that long though before developers came on the scene and bought the venue for redevelopment as housing so we had to look elsewhere.

In our hour of need, up stepped Baz Barrett and his then venue called The Doghouse located on Carlton Hill. In the past this had been The Catholic Club but under Baz's tenure it became a venue, rehearsal studio and recording studio so was ideal for us at it already boasted amplifiers, drum kits, PA systems, lighting rigs and of course a licensed bar. We couldn't really have asked for more and we spent a few years there until the Church authorities decided that they didn't like the idea of hosting the rock'n'rollers and were going to demolish the building to build some kind of church related property.

With the fact that the 'brand' was established, it was relatively easy to move ourselves across the road to The Nags Head and carry on there. First of all we played in their upstairs function room but then we got moved downstairs into a side bar area meaning we were fairly cramped in terms of space to perform and for people to actually watch what was going on.

As time went on, we realised that The Nags Head wasn't really working for us and so it was suggested that Sue from The Fox & Hounds was receptive to hosting us there and so we moved over taking our equipment and the promotional stuff with us.

And that's where we currently are and how we got there