OVGC: Watershed Committee

Damascus Drum Cafe and Books

The Damascus Drum Cafe and Books opened its doors on 2 April 2005. Originally built as a bootmakers and shoe repair shop in the late 19th century on the site of a couple of thatched cottages, it overlooks the Slitrig River in the heart of the Scottish Borders town of Hawick.

Christopher and Frances Ryan restored the old shop on the ground floor, retaining most of the original features such as the wood panelled walls. The floor was renewed with reclaimed boards from the recently demolished Pringles woollen mills nearby.

The intention has been to provide a setting where people of the town and wayfarers may come and enjoy each other's company with good coffee, tea and other sustenance, fairtrade and homeproduced. It has become a meeting place for the local green movement, as well as holding occasional open mike nights for local musicians, readings and book launches for poets and writers.

Damascus Drum is here simply for the pleasure of it.

 and read what others say:

14 August 2008 - What I did on my holidays # 2

Welcome to Inpress Books - Supporting Small Presses

http://www.inpressbooks.co.uk/what_i_did_on_my_holidays_2_z079.aspx

Rugby and woollens is what comes to mind when you think of Hawick, if indeed you think of it at all. Give or take the odd Walter Scott, the Scottish Borders are not awash with well known writers, living or dead. And, frankly, anyone who wades through Walter Scott deserves a medal. I can't remember Hawick having a new bookshop for the last 30 or so years, save for a dull WH Smith and a dull Menzies before it. There is a longstanding second hand bookshop called Waterspade but I have never, ever found it to be open. This last week the visible books in the tiny shop window are different to the ones a few months ago, but there is no other sign of life. No opening hours are given; there is no website. Could it be a front for money laundering? Is the owner called Marie Celeste?
But there is somewhere to go: a wee cafe called the Damascus Drum, www.damascusdrum.co.uk, run by Chris Ryan. I'd never gone in the back of the cafe before, imagining the second hand books were for decoration only. Big mistake - the selection is rare. I felt my whole reading life passing in front of me looking at the shelves, which are especially packed with travel writing of the Bruce Chatwin era. I spent a couple of pounds on an old Penguin S Y Agnon book I'd not seen before and fought off buying the a book by the New Zealand writer Elizabeth Knox. And this is clearly where Hawick literati meet... the next night the local writing group was launching its latest anthology, there were some other small press mags around. Just as I was leaving I was cheered to find a bunch of teachers discussing the Hawick teenage book award. The Drum is on Silver Street - the same street that a couple of gay men were ran out of town from some thirty something years back. That it is the same street feels appropriate somehow, the old Scotland and the new.
I was cheered also to see the library looking good (I'd worked there in 1972). And there is one other small gem - the Turkish interest coffee table mag Cornucopia (www.cornucopia.net) is based in the town. It's a bit glossy for me, but from Hawick? Almost enough to make me move back. Well, almost.

and listen to how it sounds:

YouTube - The Matt Seattle Band Damascus Drum http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Aay0JXri7Ao
	4 min 57 sec - 17 Nov 2008 - The Band plays Matt's own composition, inspired in Hawick's Damascus Drum cafe by a particularly nourishing bowl of soup.

The Matt Seattle Band http://www.myspace.com/mattseattleband

DAMASCUS DRUM (Matt Seattle), is a Scottish pipe reel in an Arabic mode, Maqam Hijaz on A. Notation is on www.thesession.org/tunes/display/7675  and named for Hawick's favourite café - http://damascusdrum.co.uk/ -

Band members:Donald Knox -guitar, mandolin, voice
Lewis Powell-Reid - accordion, mandolin, guitar
Matt Seattle - Border pipes, fiddle, voice
Frazer Watson - darabuka, frame drums, tapan