TUCKED into a backstreet of Edinburgh’s so-called “pink triangle” is a modest LGBTQ-friendly bar, The Outhouse, with an upstairs room given over to a full schedule of community events. 

You can go there for Gay Dads, and the Gay Men’s Reading Group, and you can also go there for DocCo, that gathers the local community of documentary film-makers, or for Playtime, a fortnightly evening of jazz by some of the most relaxed and proficient instrumentalists on the Scottish scene. Or, you could go to all the events to experience, across the same tables and chairs, a dialogue between men and men, as well as men and women, that can take place in words, or moving images, or music, and somehow seem to be the same conversation.

This is the gentle murmur of community culture in perpetual motion — a collective ear that attends carefully when an individual stands up to do a solo. It might be anguished, it might be needy, it might be confrontational, but in The Outhouse it can find just enough other people to socialise. To be supported. To be heard.

When it comes to the jazz, the Playtime collective have held their own for 12 whole years in succession that were even maintained online, with international improvisations played live during Covid. When it comes to Gay Dads, that’s 25 years of continuous meetings. They all play for their community, for pleasure, for sharing the benefits of experience, and out of their own curiosity.

The jazzer stalwarts are Tom Bancroft on drums, Mario Caribe on bass and Graeme Stephen on guitar, all three virtuosos in their own right with independent careers and decades long commitment to music, who defer solos to one another in deference to whatever might be on their minds.

And with Playtime, the spice comes in the form of the guests they find or the theme they devise for the gig. So, an evening when Stephen riffed on Dave Brubeck compositions was an unexpected luxury, only rivalled by another when jazz vocalist Sophie Bancroft explored her own songs and her favourites from Suzanne Vega, all the time questioning and exploring what makes a great lyric.

This Thursday (it’s always a Thursday) they are joined by guitarist James Mackay to take on the orchestral astral groove of the great Sun Ra. To experience how that extraterrestrial cosmos will fit into the attic is a delicious prospect indeed.

Playtime will perform on May 7, at The Outhouse, Broughton St Lane, Edinburgh EH1 3LY; 8.15 start, tickets £10/£15 on the door.