The Edinburgh Fringe – “Songs for the 2020’s”
Majk will be doing a couple of gigs in the Fringe this year, with his new, revised and improved “Songs for the 2020’s” on Sunday the 18th and Sunday the 25th of August, at 4.50pm at C Alto (Venue 40: the Quaker Meeting House). Tickets £8 full price, various concessions available. If you want to buy a ticket, you should be able to do so from C Venues or the Fringe Office.
Gig in a tree!
For the adventurous among you, on Saturday the 10th of August I will be performing some of my environmental songs at 3pm, at a secret location in a tree! A short bus-ride + a 10-minute walk from Edinburgh City Centre: if you’d like to come along, ping me a message or check out my facebook page https://www.facebook.com/TheBeetrootGuy/ for details on where and when to meet.
A few other gigs happened this Summer, including three in the last week of June:
Saturday the 29th of June, Main Stage at the Climate Festival in the Meadows, 2.20-2.45pm
Wednesday the 26th of June: Climate Jam at the Outhouse, 12 Broughton Street Lane, EH1 3LY, 7-9.30pm
… and a wedding ceilidh the same evening! (Private, I’m afraid!)
“Sweets from Strangers” album launch
Majk launched his new album, “Sweets from Strangers”, with a concert at the Augustine United Church, George IV Bridge, EH1 1EL : 7-9pm on Friday 24th November.
Please note- this was for physical copies of the album- it won’t be online until early 2024. But if you want to buy a CD (how retro is that?), please contact Majk by email or on face book or fill in the form on the contact page.
It’s a slightly new style of Majk Stokes album, with some more serious songs to counterpoint the humour. A few of the songs some people may recognise, but there is plenty of new material that I promise you won’t have heard before. I have a friend who’s offered to write a review of the album, so I’ll post that in due course!
(Thanks to Marj Drysdale for the rather elegant display!)
Past gigs
“Songs for the 2020s” at the Edinburgh Fringe
It’s the 2020s, and everythings a bit… shall we say, complicated? Majk offers humourous reflections and cathartic choruses as he uses comedy song to explore some of the issues that face us today.
With special guest performers: on the 21st we had the wonderful Beth Clarke and her mellow mandola, and on the 23rd the amazing musical creativity of Joanie Bones.
The Big One- Extinction Rebellion
Over the weekend of the 21st of April, Majk performed a few of his songs at the big Extinction Rebellion event in Westminster.
House Concert- Friday 3rd March
…went so well that we promptly got booked for another one! See below.
The Golf Tavern, EH10 4HR- 7.30pm, Thursday 16th March
Majk performed (in fact he was the headline act!) at this fundraiser for Earthquake relief in Turkey and Syria, organised by Out Of The Bedroom and Extinction Rebellion.
House Concert- 2.30pm, Saturday 25th March
Majk and his wife Beth performed a joint gig at a house concert in Pilrig, accompanying each other on some of their own songs and tunes, and premiering a couple of exciting (and comedic) pieces that they’ve been working on together. Followed by a folk session.
Out of the Bedroom and the Meadows Festival
Majk performs fairly regularly at Out of the Bedroom, Edinburgh’s longest-running open mic night. On Saturday the 4th of June 2022 it held an open mic stage at the Meadows Festival and welcomed about 25 amazing live acts, and it will be doing the same thing again in 2023.
The Edinburgh Festival Fringe returned in 2022 for its 75th birthday, and Majk did a live show, “Heroes, Revised“, at 16.30-17.30 on the 6th, 7th, 9th, 10th and 12th of August at The Quaker Meeting House (Venue 40).
“Revised” because (a) we really need to re-think how we define a hero for the 21st century, and (b) it was be to some extent a re-worked and updated version of the online show Majk did for the Fringe in 2021.
Time To Save The World!
In the run-up to the COP26 climate talks in Glasgow between the 31st of October and the 12th of November this year, I did what I could to bring the issue of the environment to people’s awareness through the medium of comedy songs, with a series of “micro-gigs” in and around Edinburgh in October and early November. The line-up was something like this:
Saturday 16th Oct: 11.45am-12.15pm, the Eco Fair, Out of the Blue Drill Hall, Dalmeny St, EH6 8RG
Sunday 17th Oct: Just after 12pm, the Quaker Meeting House, 7 Victoria Terrace, EH1 2JL as we unveil our new “Quakers for Environmental Justice” banner and hang it from the Meeting Room window
Also Sunday 17th Oct: 3pm, Beetroot Sauvage Cafe, 33-41 Ratcliffe Terrace, EH9 1SX
Thursday 21st Oct: 3pm, SHRUB Zero Waste Hub, 22 Bread Street, EH3 9AF
Also Thursday 21st Oct: 7.30pm, singing on the beach at Portobello with the Protest in Harmony choir
Friday 22nd Oct: 7pm, the COP26 Pilgrimage ceilidh, Walpole Hall, St Mary’s Cathedral, Palmerston Place
Sunday 31st Oct: 1pm, Extinction Rebellion’s Climate demo at the Scottish Parliament
Wednesday 3rd Nov: 6.30pm, Typewronger Bookshop, 4a Haddington Place, EH7 4AE
Thursday 4th Nov: 4pm, SHRUB Zero Waste Hub, 22 Bread Street, EH3 9AFSaturday 5th Nov: 7pm, Corner Pocket pool & snooker club, 24-26 Buccleuch St, Dalkeith, EH22 1HA, supporting the amazing David Rovics!
Saturday 6th Nov: a cabaret slot at the Friends of The Earth international ceilidh in Govan, Glasgow
“Heroes” – Online Edinburgh Fringe concert
With the help of the amazing Sandy Butler I recorded my online show, “Heroes” for the Edinburgh Fringe Festival this summer, and it looked bloody good.
The show was available to download on demand from the 6th to the 30th of August, and raised £262 from ticket sales, which went to support the Grassmarket Community Project in Edinburgh and Quaker work in the UK and abroad.
It included plenty of the trademark Majk Stokes humour, plus a couple of rather more serious songs, including a new one entitled “Real Heroes”, dedicated to all the NHS staff who’ve done so much to look after us all during the pandemic, and to all the essential workers who’ve kept the shops open and made sure that the country didn’t grind to a halt completely. Also with insights into the secret life of trainspotters, the reality of relationships, and what it means to be a hero in the 2020s, and featuring Quakers, protestors, superheroes, merry maidens, leeches and IT support guys.
I’m hoping I’ll be able to do a repeat showing at some stage later this year.
Songs From Lockdown- Comic Relief Fundraising Gig
I did another of my zoom gigs online on Comic Relief day, Friday the 19th of March: as it marked basically a year since the UK went into its first Covid lockdown, I performed some of the new songs and poems I’ve written over that time; and tried to raise a wodge of money for charity. It was my most international gig yet, with people tuning in from as far away as San Francisco and New Zealand; and we reached £935, which Comic Relief told me puts me in their top 10% of fundraisers!
https://www.justgiving.com/fundraising/majks-rednoseday21
And on Saturday the 27th of March, between 7 and 10pm, I took part in the wonderful Ceilidh Collective‘s equally wonderful Equinox Ceilidh, fundraising for the perhaps even more wonderful COP26 Coalition’s World Climate Ceilidh in October: I sang one of my songs and helped to raise a brilliant £1155.13 for an incredible cause!
I also did a little slot at the Quaker Cabaret Ceilidh on Saturday the 30th of May 2020, organised by the Ceilidh Collective.
TIME TO SAVE THE WORLD!
Online Album Launch Concert
7.30pm, Saturday 18th April 2020
*Zoom link below*
The title of Majk’s show in 2018/2019 was “One More Cup of Coffee, and then we’ll Save the World”, and broadly speaking it covered two subjects about which he feels passionate: coffee and the environment. Well, he’s had his cup of coffee, and now the world (still) needs saving, so this year he will be launching his new album “Time to Save the World”, with some more songs about the environment and other new material, plus one or two old favourites.
He was going to hold a live launch concert at the start of April, follow it up with a few gigs around the country and do a series of shows in the Edinburgh Fringe in August… and then Covid-19 happened.
In fact right now it feels like the world needs saving even more than before, so Majk has needed to take a bit of time to write a couple of new songs and subtly change the angle of the show to reflect the fact that we’re currently living through two crises. However he still believes the world can be saved, and so he invites you to join him on Zoom for an online launch gig on Saturday the 18th of April at 7.30pm.
https://us04web.zoom.us/j/76868443641?pwd=SzNabzJQY2lVSjdaNFcwUHI5VHNVUT09
Meeting ID: 768 6844 3641
I’ll send out the password individually- let me know if you’d like it.
Join the superheroes, coffee-drinking eco-warriors, bears and baboons, Martians and Venusians, Tasmanians and Yorkshiremen, ancient Romans, ageing rockers, IT workers and genetically-modified cats, and help to save the world.
Other Gigs to be announced
(when we can meet together in groups of two or more people again!)