witchwood live!
legendary music venue created by John Dyson and dp in 1988

Stop Press:
We are organising a 20th Anniversary Stereo Graffiti event at The Witchwood on Sunday August 24th 2008. A number of bands and artistes have been booked for this, with more info available shortly.

There are many stories to tell of days and nights at The Witchwood and I am endeavouring to recount them within the stories section of the site. In a nutshell however, back in '87 The Witchwood was just a run-down pub in the shitty district of Ashton Under Lyne, a suburb of Greater Manchester. By the time I left my position as the resident live music promoter in 1999 the venue had hosted over 2,500 live music gigs, featuring amongst others everyone from Steve Coogan to Bad Manners, from Bill Nelson to Bert Jansch, from Hazel O'Connor to Frank Skinner, Caroline Ahearne and many many many more ...

It was in '87 that this gentleman with an eye for a mission called John Dyson had set about turning the fortunes of this run-down pub around. His first move was to use the freehold status of the licence to his advantage and very quickly the pub got a good name for it's real ales. Then via pub talk and a local muso called Pete Taylor, John heard that in the 60's, when in it's former guise as The Globe, this pub was a legendary live music venue. So he set about trying to find a few people to set-up some music events.

John's approach was quite unique: he set out to programme a run of contrasting music nights using different promoters, which for a pub at that time was quite unheard of.

At the time I was working part-time in Youth & Community in Tameside, and the income from this covered my exploits as a struggling singer songwriter and Stand And Deliver poetry promoter. Stand And Deliver at this time was moving into alternative cabaret and music, and I too was starting to promote gigs at the local theatre for local bands. I was therefore one of those people whom John aproached.

In August '88, we therefore launched the first Stereo Graffiti Night, a weekly Thursday night venture into new music, comedy and assorted cultured entertainment. By January '89, I had been so successful that John offered me the contract to promote 5 nights a week, covering soul bands, blues and rock as well as the mega popular SG night.

18 months later, John put his neck on the line and invested in re-building The Witchwood to enhance it's real ale bar and to both seperate the music venue from the free house and to develop it as a fully professional circuit venue.

In 1995, having brought his wife Marjorie and son Phil prominently into the business, John chose to accept an offer he couldn't refuse and sold The Witchwood to a pub and bar company called Inventive Leisure.

Inventive Leisure sold The Witchwood in 2003, and it still runs to this day, now owned by a small consortium of ex-Bar Staff and managers, still full of people passionate about live music.