Patrick Wolf relocated to Ramsgate from London six years ago but until now has never performed live anywhere in Thanet. That changes this weekend when he will perform twice at ARK Cliftonville as part of the wider Margate Pride programme.
Asked why it’s taken until now, he says, “There is a phrase ‘don’t shit on your own doorstep’ that comes to mind!”
“I really have never wanted my home to be my colleague,” he goes on, saying that London “worked me till I was sick and I never wanted to develop the same relationship when I moved here.”
His 2025 album Crying the Neck was partly inspired by the folklore of East Kent, and so, he says, “it’s only right to have some homecoming moments for it and do some work in Margate.”
Whether it ever happens again remains to be seen, with Patrick saying that he still has a rule for himself not to play in Ramsgate, opting to keep it “the place where I garden, wonder, parent my cats, write, daydream, swim in the sea, go to the bakery, the cinema.”
“I have my studio here and I only call it work in there to be left alone,” he continues. “I hope Ramsgate and I never become colleagues, it might ruin it all.”
Whether the Pride show is a one off or not, it’s an exciting addition to this year’s programme. Originally billed at The Invert Folk Club, it was to be a joint performance with his bandmate Sophie Crawford. Sadly, Sophie has had to pull out due to illness.
Instead, the audience will be treated to a North Sea Song Cycle, with Patrick performing an unplugged setlist of songs set on the shore and sea from across his career. This includes everything from 2005’s Wind in the Wires, inspired by the Cornish coast, to Reculver and Foreland from Crying the Neck.
The show will offer something for people to “identify with other ways of being LGBT, be it in music, aesthetic or spirit. I think that space is lacking at most [at Pride events], whether it’s a literary space, a goth space, a crafting space, an introvert’s space, a sober space,” Patrick explains.
Strange Tourist: It feels like you’re bringing something very different to the wider Margate Pride day programme. Did you conceive the show specifically for Margate Pride?
Patrick Wolf: I receive yearly requests to play different Prides across the country and Europe and 99.9% of the time I don’t think it’s the right fit for my music or aesthetic so turn it down. On this occasion, with it being Pride so close to home, I’m well aware that Thanet has a certain “turn the wrong corner” vintage homophobic and transphobic streak to it.
That makes me certain, the notion of Pride as a weapon against shame is important here to pass on to others. As long as Pride holds at its core a purpose of equality, empowerment and protest, I think it is quite a crucial movement in 2026 to make in provincial, coastal or rural towns.
I think a folk music event is [a] counter-culture event within Pride, which is most likely to be a mainstream pop culture party. Margate Pride specifically has always had the multitudes and want for subversion for far more types of LGBT folk to find themselves in. So, it’s the only one in recent years I’ve said “yes and what can we do together to make something special and purposeful in?”
ST: You’ve also got Selkie’s Kiss opening the show. How do you know them and why did you want them on the bill?
PW: Originally this event was a folk club with the wonderful Sophie Crawford, who has had to pull out for health reasons. She is co-organiser of an event called Queer Folk that is part of a huge, wonderful wave of folk revivalism happening in this country. Sophie put forward the group to me as a wild and brilliant act to open our club with and I agreed. I’ve become quite obsessed with their sound since then.
ST: Moving to Ramsgate seemed to bring new inspiration and at least in part what brought you back to releasing music. What is so special about Thanet?
PW: I think it’s a feeling, those who settled here have - especially in Ramsgate - of something going still inside and a sense of “oh... I'm home” coming over you. For me it came when I was still a runner and ran one morning from the Royal Harbour Hotel, where I had woken up with a view of the lighthouse in the harbour, to Pegwell bay and the Old Hoverport.
It was in one of those weeks we were all allowed to leave home during the lockdown and I was testing my new sobriety by going on a writing trip alone, which would normally entail four bottles of warm gin in a hotel room. I never thought about drinking once and in my brief two days swimming and exploring in and around the harbour. I was given by the town and its nature so much promise, of new work, ideas, relationships with land and sea and chance of a new life out here.
I went back to Lewisham and put my flat on sale the next day.
ST: Crying the Neck covered some dark topics but overall feels to me like a cathartic and affirming album. How do you feel about it a year on from its release?
PW: I was so happy when I played the final show for it at the Union Chapel. It was a heavy record to carry in public for a year. Thematically, death, bankruptcy, and addiction, were the talking points of all interviews for that year. I know it ended up being a healing record for a lot of people and a catharsis for me to make, but I wasn’t able to move onto the next stage of grieving my mother until I could move on from the album.
Next came a process of gleaning, as I went straight onto a USA tour, where I discovered which songs had resonated most with its listeners there and more and more songs from it crept back on the setlist, which I still play.
Touring songs like Reculver and telling the story of the towers and how they stand geographically and the history of the Wantsum silting up in places like Texas and New Orleans, is so wild to me. Or describing a cliff fall and the tides at Stone Bay when I sing Foreland in somewhere like Nashville or North Carolina. It’s really quite surreal and like a psychic hotline home when I do.
ST: You spent June touring the US and you'll return again this autumn. At a time while a lot of people are quite fearful of going there, what was your experience of the country at this moment in time?
PW: I think in the same way the popular thing to say and read on the internet will be “don’t go to Margate, you’ll be get cholera from swimming and get caught in a 13-year-old TikTok riot trying to leave.” We all know as residents, the lived reality vs the internet hysteria.
I think we allow our fears to be exploited too easily, and rarely do we question what or who is making us "fearful" and why. I feel a responsibility to constantly put my fears in balance or life becomes smaller and my approach to the world more isolated.
I toured in Russia on and off for a decade and even after the enactment of the Putin's gay propaganda law in 2013. I took precautions to protect my audience and offer them changing rooms at the venue so they could dress how they wanted and go home safely from my shows.
As an artist, you show up where you and your work are needed. You show up for human beings, not their country, your audience and not its government, good or bad. With my touring it’s very simple, the way it's always worked; I go where I am asked, where I am wanted and where I can earn a living.
I now have 23 years of songs written to create a show for the spirit of the night in question, in hopes to give the audience solace, escape or empowerment.
ST: You’ve released two new singles recently, are you working towards a new album?
PW: I knew with my touring schedule this year that my next album won’t be released til 2027, so I decided I needed to give 2026 two songs and statements I thought helpful. So The Beast and The Laughing Dove are those two songs.
Crying The Neck was the first album in an album series to work its way round the Celtic wheel of the year, so I am just deciding whether to move forward from Lammas and Mabon or backwards. I have two albums currently up on my writing boards in my Ramsgate studio, so, just letting the summer take its course here and seeing which album raises its hand first to be finished.
I also have just got keys to an allotment, so I have fledgeling pumpkins and Brussel sprouts on my mind.
Patrick Wolf will perform two shows at ARK in Cliftonville on Saturday, August 8 - a 3pm matinee and an 8pm evening show. Tickets £30 with 25% donated to Margate Pride.
