Glory days at the London Lantern: from left, Ben Folke Thomas, Trevor Moss, Jack Day, Hannah-Lou, Pepe Belmonte and Andy Hankdog.
Hastings Lantern Society opens its doors
It’s almost 10 years since Trevor Moss and Hannah-Lou opened the Lantern Society in London, offering a microphone to all exponents of acoustic music. Now they are about to launch the Lantern Society in Hastings, as they explain.
Trevor Moss & Hannah-Lou’s Lantern Society, reads the hand-stitched bunting, dappled in flickering candlelight and red glow. A thriving hubbub and forum, cauldron and big top. A throng of performers and listeners alike gathered from all over town and beyond jostle and meet. There’s no list for players to sign up, it’s not even first come, first served, for at the Lantern Society fortune favours the brave. Faces with eyes and ears on tiptoes are forced to climb in the doorway. ‘Welcome to the Lantern Society, home of the Lantern Society Radio Hour. I’m Trevor Moss and this is my wife Hannah-Lou.’
It was in 2007 that we established the now legendary acoustic club The Lantern Society upstairs in a small room above a Dickensian pub in the City of London. Over the coming years the humble wooden stage would be graced by countless players from multi-million selling recording artists to fledgling talents.
In 2009 the club became home to The Lantern Society Radio Hour, an online radio show hosted by Trevor Moss and featuring the very best performances from our much coveted stage. The noteworthy result was the forging of a unique and definitive document live from the frontline of a constantly evolving music scene.
With an old-school broadcasting style a la Bob Harris and the industrious spirit of Alan Lomax’s field recordings, the archive was sought out by the British Library Sound Archive for inclusion and preservation. With such a rich vein of musical talent and tradition in Hastings, the new radio hour will undoubtedly unearth and capture more treasures for generations to come to discover.
Recording artists in our own right, we passed the club on in order to tour and promote our albums, and the London Lantern is still going strong today in the capable hands of Gibraltan poet laureate Gabriel Moreno.
Now settled in St Leonards-on-Sea, having played everywhere from the Royal Albert Hall to the Ryman Auditorium, Nashville, and the Warsaw Congress Hall, we’ve decided it’s time to reignite the Lantern once more. We’ll be opening the doors every first Thursday of the month at The Printworks.
The Lantern Society Hastings Thursday 5 January (and thereafter every first Thursday of the month), 7.30pm, The Printworks, 14 Claremont, Hastings TN34 1HA. Admission £3.
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