1 Kew Road, Richmond TW9 2NQ
Crawdaddy club 1963
Yesterday and today
In early 1963, Sunday nights at 1 Kew Road were the launchpad for a recently-formed r&b group called The Rolling Stones. These were the early days of the Crawdaddy, a new club started by Giorgio Gomelsky in the basement of the Station Hotel, as the building was then called. According to a report in the Richmond and Twickenham Times, Mick Jagger was still a student at the LSE; Keith Richards was an art student, Brian Jones an architect, and Charlie Watts a designer; Bill Wyman was a "representative", and on piano was the almost-forgotten Ian Stewart. Gomelsky offered them a weekly residency, and an initial audience of 50 rapidly grew to more than 300. One night The Beatles came to hear them. After that the crowds grew so large that the promoter was forced to relocate the club to the nearby Richmond Athletic Ground.
In 2021, musicians Peter Jones and Clement Regert decided to set up a new Sunday night jazz club for the post-pandemic era, and in September of that year Off the Rails was born. For the last four years we have also programmed the jazz stage at Twickenham's annual High Tide music festival .
Upstairs at One Kew Road is a large, airy space with plenty of seating, plus a good menu, and there are bars and tables both upstairs and downstairs.
What We do
Off the Rails presents a wide range of music under the general umbrella of jazz. We are particularly keen to feature younger, up-and-coming artists from diverse backgrounds who play their own compositions. Since the club started we have welcomed Phoenician Blinds, Germana Stella la Sorsa, Luna Cohen, the Tristan Banks Quartet, Joy Ellis, Bea Asurmendi, Julian Costello, Yolanda Charles, Glebe, Yetii, Poppy Daniels, Brandon Allen, Deschanel Gordon, Rob Luft, Lily Dior, Pyjaen, Gabriele Pribetti, Emily Francis, Maciek Pysz, Sultan Stevenson, Wild Card, Alex Hitchcock, Rosie Frater-Taylor, Binker Golding, Tomasz Bura and Lydian Collective.
Getting here
Directly opposite Richmond Station, One Kew Road can be reached by District Line underground, London Overground and National Rail. Buses 65, 110, 190, 371, 419, 490, H37, R68 and R70 stop outside the station. There is a multi-storey car park next to the station, and a large open-air car park 3 minutes' walk away just off the A316.