Independent Venue Week | website |
By: Dan Salter
Explore our interactive map of IVW events here
The second Independent Venue Week kicks off on Monday (26th Jan) and is back far bigger and better than last year. It’s an initiative that we are fully behind here at E&D so we thought it would be a good idea to catch up with Sybil Bell and find out more.
(((o))): So, this year sees the second edition of Independent Venue Week. Why are independent venues so important to the UK music scene?
Sybil: I think what we’re trying to do here is highlight that artists have to play somewhere, they have to cut their teeth and learn their trade somewhere, and the best place for them to do that is somewhere close to where they live and they have friends and family and somewhere that they can go to regularly and learn their craft.
You don’t want to, as a new band, be traipsing across the country 50 miles or 100 miles or 200 miles to play a venue where you’ve got no local friends that can come and support you, where it’s a journey and there’s a cost involved. You want to be doing something local and close to you where you can learn your trade and I think what’s really important is having venues in lots of different local communities. It’s vital for the artists, so that they’ve got somewhere they can go but it’s actually just as important for the local community made up of music fans and people who don’t know yet that they’re music fans, to have somewhere that’s safe and well-run, that’s got good equipment in, that know what they’re doing to put on bands so that you can go and hear new music.
So, it’s vitally important because as an artist you can’t just sit in a rehearsal room and rehearse for a year and then suddenly go and play on a 3,000 capacity stage. It’s too daunting. As much of playing live is about learning the craft and understanding how to work with an audience as it is playing your music so it’s hugely important.
(((o))): Yes. I couldn’t agree more, personally. That’s why we want to support this. So, as an adjunct to that: what inspired you to start Independent Venue Week? Why did you think it was necessary?
Sybil: I think there’s so many initiatives that either celebrate or support different parts of the industry and I’ve been a venue owner before and I know lots of young bands and they’re such a vital part of the ecosystem as an artist and at no point has anybody ever stood up and said “You know what, actually, if we didn’t have these venues we wouldn’t have the bands playing main stages at festivals because they wouldn’t have got that point and it was just something that came to us. We were having a conversation about something else, we were looking at Record Store Day and just thinking “What a great initiative” and it occurred to us that actually there was nothing being done to celebrate or support these people and that’s kind of, really, as simple as that.
That’s how it came about. It was a very simple concept and we knew that, having been a venue owner and also knowing so many artists, we felt that there would be a lot of support for an initiative like this.
(((o))): Yeah definitely. How easy was it then to get venues engaged with the idea?
Sybil: On the whole very easy. There have been the odd exceptions. Some people who just either don’t get it or don’t like it or don’t want to be part of it. There have been venues we’ve been to see – specifically in Brighton, we came down and did a day there and visited lots of venues and all the venues that we visited seemed enthusiastic and then when it came to it none of them have come on board, so we’ve only got two venues in Brighton.
I think it’s interesting because – certainly the first year that we did this – a lot of people… none of us knew what to expect, to be honest. We knew we had this vision and we had this idea and we wanted to keep it quite simple and not be too ambitious, so that we could figure out how it worked and then grow it. So it was no surprise that not everybody wanted to come onboard in the first year, although we had more venues than we had slots for.
This second year, we’ve grown five-fold. So we’ve grown from 17 venues to 90 and it’s been much easier to get venues involved this year. There’s still some that don’t want to be part of it, there’s some that wanted to be part of it that in the last week have just had to pull out because their shows have fallen through but on the whole people get it. We’re not charging people any money, we don’t take any revenue. We’re providing a platform that helps people to recognise and realise that the venues and the people that run them are there week in week and are putting on shows and it would be great to support them.
(((o))): Was there anything you learned from last year’s that you’ve used to make this year’s better?
Sybil: Yeah, there’s plenty we’ve learned. I think we have almost punched above our weight a bit last year, we were very fortunate to get Colin Greenwood as our ambassador and that was a great ambassador to have as a starting point. I think we learned a lot about what we need from the venues to make this happen and what they need from us and I think also – it wasn’t such a lesson, this, but we always knew we wanted the first year to be quite small scale in terms of number of venues but we wanted it to have a really broad geographical reach. So we wanted it to cover as much of the country as possible. So we only did one venue per location last year, so that we could keep it manageable, but it was always in our minds that we wanted to get to about 90 for this year and so, I guess, we’ve been able to execute that purely on the support that we’ve had from the Arts Council, that’s been instrumental in us being able to carry on.
We’ve had support from people like PRS and we’ve got the Musicians Union and UK Music and so on coming on board. So, the industry support has been fantastic. I think also with something like Venues Day, which ran for the first time at the end of last year, which was put together by the Music Venue Trust, also helps to highlight why this is important and why people should get involved and we’ve got a lot of good feedback from that as well.
So, there seems to be a bit of a groundswell at the moment of interest and support and activity for small venues and it’s great that we’ve been able to be a part of that and hope to be a part of that for very much longer, actually.
(((o))): We were at Venues Day and I did feel the response was very positive.
Sybil: It was very positive and I think the interesting thing about Venues Day is that nobody went in with an agenda – even Mark and Beverley, who set it up. They didn’t go in saying “That needs to be this, let’s hope we can get there”, they just went in and said “Let’s get everyone in a room and let’s get people’s thought and ideas about what they want and how it could be.
((o))): Definitely. So, obviously this has been embraced by a lot of local bands and local venues. How have you found the response from more established artists? Have many of them volunteered to come back and play small shows back where they started?
Sybil: Yeah, I can’t tell you who because it’s embargoed but we’ve got an arena band, they’ve got two dates in February and they’re doing a warm-up show at their local venue, which will be amazing. Frank Turner’s doing two shows, one in London and one for Xfm up in Manchester. He can sell out any sized show that he wants.
We’ve got Laura Marling doing a show at Hebden Bridge, which I think will be absolutely beautiful. Then you’ve got people like Palma Violets playing shows as well. You’ve got Peace playing shows, The Yardbirds – you know, a huge band from way back when playing the 100 Club, which I think will also be pretty magical. And then you’ve got newer up and coming artists. People like Binkbeats are doing their first UK show and they’re playing the Royal Albert Hall. So it is a really good mix of things coming through. We’ve got bands from the 60s playing venues that were big in the 60s and we’ve got brand new bands like Binkbeats. Who would have ever thought you’d have Binkbeats at the Royal Albert Hall?!
I mean that’s exactly what we’re trying to do with this week is reminisce and also look forward and bring together people that normally wouldn’t play together. The guy at Hebden Bridge is doing an amazing week-long series of shows and he’s got Laura Marling, he’s also got Edwin Collins and Edwin Collins is showing the film about the stroke that he had and his recovery and then he’s doing a Q&A and then he’s doing an acoustic set. So, that’ll be a special night, it really will.
(((o))): I was about to ask you what you’re particularly excited about for this year’s events but by the sounds of it, pretty much everything!
Sybil: Well it’s funny because last year I went out on the road and did…we did six nights last year and I did a different venue each night and I think Joe, my business partner is able to do the same this year but we’ve got Rio and Chloe also working with us, cos we have another project – we also organise the Music Producers Guild Awards, which is ten days after the end of Independent Venue Week. It’s a real bottleneck of work for us, but the four of us are going to be at different gigs each night of the week.
So between us we’re going to cover 28 venues and Joe and I are going to be out of London, we’ve been very fortunate to be given cars by Vauxhall, so we’re going to take those cars and pootle round the country and get to as many gigs as we can and Rio and Chloe, who are holding the fort in the office, will go to a different gig each night. So, none of us will be together.
I’m so looking forward to Laura Marling, I think that will be incredible. I’m also really looking forward to seeing Andrew Weatherall in Birmingham on the Friday. I know that we’ve got Frankie and the Heartstrings playing a whole series of gigs around the country – they’re the only band doing seven gigs across the week.
(((o))): Yeah, we were going to try and talk to them about that, actually
Sybil: Yeah, you should do. Vauxhall have come onboard to support the whole week, actually, and they’re giving Frankie a van to drive round in, which you can imagine – if you’ve seen any footage of Frankie on tour, it’s gonna be pretty hilarious. They’re doing seven shows.
And then you’ve got bands like Songhoy Blues, who are playing up at the Harley in Sheffield, Huw Stephens is curating two shows – he’s doing the Frankie show at The Social in London and he’s also doing another show down at GwDiH? in Cardiff. The Half Moon in London are launching a live album to celebrate Independent Venue Week – a vinyl-only live album. I think they’re taking three venues on the night, they’re starting up in Notting Hill and then going down to Barnes and then going back to the Half Moon in Putney – taking a bus, looking after people, feeding them, giving them drinks and you’re just going to go round for the evening and see loads of different bands. So there’s so much going on that we’re excited about.
We’ve also got some workshops going on, helping to introduce 14 to 18 year olds to what it means to work in live music as a non-performer and not yet announced but I can tell you in confidence, because I think we’re going to announce it on Monday – the Featured Artist Coalition are doing a drop-in clinic down at the Water Rats during the week and one evening as well. So, it’s not just the gigs and the music side, we’re doing a lot of practical things to help people learn about the industry and get better educated.
(((o))): That sounds absolutely brilliant. So, I think finally: how do you see this all growing in the future? What’s the master plan?
Sybil: We very much see this being an annual event. We’ve grown five-fold this year, what we’d really like to see is more, bigger artists coming back and playing venues that meant something to them when they were starting out. We’d like to get more collaborations onboard, so perhaps some of those bigger artists choosing their lineup, you know, so that they can get some support from local artists who would also appreciate the leg up.
We’d like to be doing more workshops and more educational things. I think having the Arts Council onboard has made a huge difference this year and we’re very grateful for that because they can help facilitate a great deal for us and make it possible for us to pull extra people in. I think, also, beyond just what we’re doing in the UK the plan has been right from the outset that if it’s successful we’d like to take it to other countries but we certainly wouldn’t run in the same week in different territories because there’s no way you could do something in New York in January. It just wouldn’t happen.
What it would enable us to do is to take Independent Venue Week to different parts of the world at different times of the year and just keep the whole project ongoing, which will be fantastic. And I think the other thing back in the UK that we’d like to do – and we’ve already had a lot of interest in – is run gigs throughout the year, actually. We don’t want to be one of those initiatives that says “Look at these venues, how important and fabulous they are” for that week and then just disappear. We want to try and work with partners to bring artists to venues throughout the year. I think that’s one of the other crucial things that we’ve done is trying to partner venues up with people that they might not necessarily work with or haven’t worked with in the past and there’s a lot of that going on. BBC Introducing are working with a lot of venues and we’ve introduced some artists to venues and partners like record labels and management companies. So that’s exactly what we’re trying to do, forge relationships that are not just there for that one week but they can work throughout the year.
(((o))): I think that would be a really good thing. I mean, certainly, one thing that perhaps detracts from Record Store Day is that sense that record stores are becoming dependent on it and I wouldn’t want to see venues just kind of living for that one week a year where everyone comes.
Sybil: Well that’s it, and I think we chose January because often it’s a really quiet time of year – depending on who you speak to, that’s not always the case – but it’s also a really good time for lots of bands being tipped for the year and people getting excited about what’s happening. But we’ve always been very mindful that we don’t want this to be a London-centric thing, we don’t want it to be something that just focuses on a week and we’ll work tirelessly as much as we can with the support that we get to make sure we keep things going throughout the year.
(((o))): Brilliant. Well, I think that’s all I’ve got, really. Many thanks for talking to us.
Sybil: Fantastic. Thanks for the support.
