Tom Fairnie - Foakies

Foakies is an evening devoted to singer songwriters and poets performing their own original songs and writing. It takes place on the first Tuesday of every month (except January) in the downstairs lounge of The Royal Oak at 1 Infirmary Street in Edinburgh. We charge £3 entry, which is really a method of restricting the crowd to those who seriously want to listen and also so that we can pay for publicity and a website as well as giving something to the main performers. Foakies came from an event called the Songwriters Showcase, which Martin Boland and I organised with a lot of help from Mark Barnett. It ran for 73 consecutive evenings and it was a real challenge. It almost seemed to take over our lives and I think I can say that in many ways we were glad when it ended although it did give us some fantastic evenings. However, Mark was keen to keep the momentum going, which is why he and I decided to start Foakies. It has, at times, been absolutely magical and it has never been less than a great evening. We've had a wealth of talent at Foakies and we're into our third year now. I intend to put all the posters and all of my somewhat notorious Foakies emails on this site as soon as I can. Foakies now has its own MySpace site which can be found at http://www.myspace.com/foakies
The February 08 Foakies kicks the year off to a great start with the amazing Dave Gibb http://www.myspace.com/davegibb who stuns everyone with his incredible finger picking and clever songwriting. Not to be missed! We're still lining up support acts for the year so if you fancy a Foakies spot make contact through my Contact page on here.
Here's an unfinished list of some of the performers who have appeared at Foakies and it's predecessor The Songwriter Showcase... The Travelling Waverlies, Tom Clelland, David Ferrard, Nick Allmark, Donald Buick, Martin Boland, Kenny Vass, Arthur Wilson, Ken Kennedy & Kathy Stewart, Gill Reid & Audrey Hunter, Bernard Brogue, Sara Kamin, Andi Neate, Chris Rogers, Peter Nardini, Robin Laing, Taxicab, Michelle Hughes, Mark Barnett, Tom Fairnie, Gavin Inglis, Nancy Somerville, Steven Harvey, Ash Dickinson, Irene Brown, Jane McKie, Mark Rafferty and Andrea Tomlinson, Rob Cairns, Mike Dillon, Paul Simon (alright, it may have been a lookie likie).