61 Bar & Venue

Head down to High Street and you'll find 61 doing what Taunton pubs should do—hosting actual live acts alongside decent drinks. It's the kind of place where you rock up not knowing who's playing and end up staying till closing because the band's genuinely good. The atmosphere shifts depending on the night: some evenings it's packed shoulder-to-shoulder with people who came specifically for the music, others it's just locals propping up the bar with their regulars' drink of choice. You get the sense the owners care about programming—they're not just sticking anyone on the stage.