Speaker 1What is up gorgeous people? Welcome back to the James Kennedy podcast. I hope you're all awesome. I got a great one lined up for you guys today. A chat that I've been looking forward to having for a really long time. I've been chasing this guy for ages and I finally managed to nail him down. But before we get down to business, have you subscribed to the podcast? I know this is like a really boring preamble that I do literally every single time now, but I'm gonna keep doing it until every single last one of you has hit the damn subscribe button, hit the star rating button, and left a goddamn review. I mean, come on, I'm good to you guys. Get on it. Okay, so that's the nagging out of the way. Today's guest, we are talking about the state of live music venues in this country. As I'm sure all of you know by now, iconic, legendary, awesome grassroots music venues that have been the host to so many iconic bands are closing down left, right, and center and have been for many, many years now. And it's such a shame and such a travesty. I want to get into why that is, what the root cause of it all is, and what the hell we can do to stop it because we cannot lose that institution. This country is top of the league in producing awesome, awesome music and artists and bands. And the small grassroots local venue is the place where that happens. That is the nurturing ground that produces the iconic bands this country is famous for. So I want to get into what is happening out there and what the hell can we do to stop the rot. So with me today is Mark David. Now, Mark David is the CEO of the Music Venue Trust, a charity that represents hundreds of small and medium-sized live music venues across the UK. And he's also a tireless campaigner for the protection of our grassroots music circuit. I've spent much of my life performing in these venues, so it's an issue that is really close to my heart. And it's an absolute pleasure to welcome onto the podcast today, Mr. Mark David. How are you, sir? Very well, James.
Speaker 2Hell of an introduction there. Thank you very much.
Speaker 1I know, I get a bit carried away sometimes. Well, thanks so much for being with us, man. I really do appreciate your time. I got loads I want to ask you today. But I thought before I get carried away and excited and, you know, lead us astray, could we start by setting the stage here for people who haven't had the background in this that we have or the experience in this world that we have as to what is the current state of play on the grassroots live venue circuit in this country at present?
Speaker 2It's kind of complex, really, because obviously coming out of the pandemic, it's great to see them all reopen. There's an enormous amount of activity taking place in them. We've not only got 2022 tours and, you know, events, but we've also picking up reschedules, cancellations from the last two years. So most of them are open, probably more than they ever have been, you know, whereas they might have been open four or five nights a week, they're now open six or seven. But, you know, it's not without its challenges. We're still seeing a huge number of cancellations. We're seeing tail tail off from ticket bookings. We're seeing obviously the cost of living crisis is now starting to hit people. And frankly, just the sheer amount of stuff that's out there is causing some problems with, you know, attendance at each show. So overall, it's got its positives and negatives. I think the big thing to talk about really is that this sector has acquired just over 100 million pounds in new debt. And that this is not a sector that can really manage that very well. It doesn't have huge finances to back it up. So it is going to be it isn't over because it's going to take three to four years for them to recover.
Speaker 1My feeling on this was that, you know, things are pretty bad before COVID. I mean, before COVID, I was seeing some of my favorite venues sort of closing down, you know, on quite a frequent basis. So what is the, what's the root cause of this? Is it just a change in how people consume music now? Or is it to do with, you know, the cost of keeping these venues open to do with, you know, the peripheral costs, such as, you know, beer taxes and things like that, or rents or gentrification? Or is it a mixture of things? Because this is, this is not just a COVID era problem, is it? This is going back quite a way now, this has been happening.
Speaker 2Yeah, I mean, it's been going on for really the last, certainly the last 20 years. I mean, in the period 2008, 2015, 35% of these venues, trading venues closed down, we ended up with 35% less. You know, some people open a few venues, but even more closed. I think it's easy to describe it in two levels, really. The easy to understand level is the sort of thing that people react to in social media and that people feel really angry about and they respond to. And that would be venues being closed by noise complaints, venues being closed by gentrification, venues being kicked out by a landlord. You know, these kinds of things are easy to get angry about and they result in petitions and they, you know, they feel good while you're being angry about them and sometimes you can solve them. But underlying all of that is a much more serious issue, which is the economics of running a music venue haven't really been addressed in the last, frankly, 25 years. And those economics have radically changed. And we haven't really addressed what a modern grassroots music venue needs to look like in order to withstand those pressures. And key amongst that and really underpinning so much of the rest of the things that's going on is about the ownership of the buildings. 93% of these venues are tenants. They have a private landlord, either a private individual or a commercial company. And they have a private landlord, either a private individual or a commercial company. And they have a private landlord, either a private individual or a commercial company, that wants to make money from the building. And it doesn't take much to realize that what do those landlords want? They want a nice, quiet tenant who's got lots of money. That's literally the description of the opposite of a grassroots music venue. You know, they're a noisy tenant that's struggling to get by, most of them operating in a kind of quasi-not-for-profit manner. Yeah. And everybody, you know, they're just kind of, you know, they're struggling to get by, most of them operating in a kind of quasi-not-for-profit manner. Yeah. And everybody that's doing it is doing the same thing. You know, we've got venue operators who are not making a profit. We've got artists playing them that are currently not making a profit. Yeah. And may never make a profit. But we've allowed them to exist in this commercial space where their landlords, for perfectly justifiable reasons, want to make money out of the property they own. And we have to address that. That then leads us to address lots of other things. We like to talk about something called the grassroots pound. And that's our analysis of when you hand over a pound at the door of one of these venues for a ticket to see your favorite artist or see a new band you might get into, how much of that pound is actually ending up in the hands of either the artist or the crew or the people who put the event together. And the answer is that once you take out very badly thought through taxation of VAT or whatever else it is, business rates and rent, even just that amount of money, you've got to make a profit out of it. Even just those three things have taken out about 42 pence in every pound. Wow. So when people ask me, well, you know, James, you played these venues, you know, you'll know the fees for playing these venues are still frighteningly low. I first promoted in one of these venues, believe it or not, 36 years ago now. On the night I promoted the first band I ever promoted, I paid the support band 50 pounds. Thirty-six years later, we're still paying them 50 pounds.
Speaker 1Yeah. Oh yeah.
Speaker 2Yeah. You know, and why is that? It's because the essential economics of that grassroots pound have not been looked at properly. We haven't said where is the money going and is it going to the right people for the right things? And who hasn't looked at that? I mean, everybody, frankly, you know, music industry hasn't looked at it properly. What are they doing about making sure we're not paying our private landlords? What are they doing to own our venues? What is government doing about taxation? We have the highest rate of VAT on grassroots ticking anywhere in the world. We're supposed to be a music nation and we tax the research and development of our new artists higher than any other country in the world. That's just stunning, really, when you look at it that way. And business rates, well, you know, I like to call this the kebab question. I've eaten a lot of kebabs. Why have I eaten a lot of kebabs? Because I go to a lot of gigs and when I fall out of the gig at about 11, 11:30, I'm hungry and I go to a kebab shop. Okay. Have I ever left my house at 11:30 to go and buy a kebab? No, that's never happened. Right? So why do you want these type of venues, what we call destination venues? Why do you want them in our communities? Because they drive other economic activity. Every 10 pounds spent on a ticket in a grassroots music venue, 17 pounds is spent elsewhere in the nighttime economy. So if you've got a show that's taking a couple of thousand pounds in tickets, 3,400 pounds in economic activity is being spent elsewhere in bars, restaurants, transport, in the rest of the economy, in the pubs and bars surrounding that thing, on taxis, on kebab shops. How do you keep the nighttime economy running? You give people reasons to go out. So why do local authorities charge music venues, excessive business rates and late night levies for encouraging people to come out into the economies that they need them to use? It doesn't make any sense. And on that ownership issue, we're currently launching a big program we call Own Our Venues, which is to change that ownership model and to finally put the music community in charge of the freeholds of these venues, not to run the buildings, but just to prevent that money from leaking out of the system when it could be going to artists, to crew, to venue operators, to production crew. You know, that's where it belongs. That's what you gave it the door for.
Speaker 1Well, yeah, I want to get into all of the ways to fix this as well, because it's fascinating stuff. One of the things that I've always wondered as well is that having sort of been a participant in these venues and also some performing quite intensely for the past 20 years, I've personally noticed, I'm not sure if it's just my own band, but I've personally noticed a drop in attendance across the board. Does that play a role in this? Is that universal or is that just my own experience?
Speaker 2Do you know what? It's difficult to gauge because it goes in waves and patterns. What we can say is that the. The decline in the number of music venues is not actually matched to any kind of perceived decline in the number of attendees. Right. So actually, you know, sometimes you see swathes of music venues being closed down by gentrification or development in a particular city or in a region or, you know, for whatever reason. And at that time, we may have a lot of bands out that are attracting a lot of people. So the two things are not very close in line. Has there. Has there been a downturn in the number of people going to live music? No. Right. There's actually been an upturn in the number of people going to live music. However, in that 20-year period, how much of the live music that they're going to see is now taking place in other locations? Got you. And particularly, I would look at festivals. You know, when I started in this industry, I think there were approximately eight festivals, believe it or not, you know, that had any. any kind of serious music content. I don't actually even know how many there are now, but I suspect there are more than a thousand. And I think the total spend on music continues, live music particularly, continues to increase. And live music is still the number. Well, music is the number one cultural decision that young people continue to make, however they choose to make that decision. So is the audience there? Yeah, I suspect it is. But are they particularly tied into going to grassroots music venues to see new and emerging bands? There's a. Wow, that's a. That's a great social question.
Speaker 1Yeah. Well, something that I observed when I first started gigging back in the early 2000s and onwards was when we first started gigging on the circuit in these very venues, it still very much felt like there was an old school kind of scene, you know? It had that vibe about it. And then as the industry started to go south, it started to experience problems as a result of the introduction of digital and all that sort of stuff. You know, all the things that we know about. I noticed there was a change in the vibe. Like promoters started doing this thing whereby instead of curating a night, a bill of good bands that all complemented each other musically and were part of building that scene, they would just chuck on a ragtag assembly of bands that had nothing in common with each other at all musically, apart from the fact that they could promise to. to shift X amount of tickets. And it became very much a kind of. it just lost the soul of it all. You know, like people would come along to a gig and have to sit through seven bands that had nothing to do musically with the only one band they came to see, which was their mates band, you know, because their mates band had to only got the gig because they promised that they'd bring a busload of their uni friends in or something. And it was around that time that it felt different as a band performing on that because you did very much feel like it was just a conveyor belt, you know, industrial kind of money making thing for a struggling venue. But I also noticed that that seemed to be felt in the audiences as well. Like the audiences were thinning out more and more and more. And then you start to see the venues closing their doors. And I just felt that maybe it was a reaction to that. And I'm sure I'm probably wrong because, you know, as you're alluding to, people clearly still love to see live music and people still do pay lots of money and queue for hours. Hours to go and see live music. I mean, Ed Sheeran brought, you know, my capital city of Cardiff down to a fucking standstill for three days last weekend. You know, so people are clearly happy to spend the money and queue and, you know, pay 10 bucks for a beer and things like that to go and see the music that they want to see. So in terms of the grassroots, smaller local venues putting on original bands, does audience attendance play a part in this? Is attendance a factor in this, in keeping the venue's doors open? Or am I completely. Well, you're off guard.
Speaker 2Well, the great thing about your podcast, James, is that we can have an incredibly free-ranging and freewheeling discussion of all the reasons why that might be, you know, in that 20-year period. Well, let's just revisit that. The underlying point here is that people are forced to make, venue operators and promoters, are forced to make commercial decisions that we don't really want them to make. How do we generate great new bands, great talent that we're, frankly, world famous for, you know, from Wales or from the whole of Britain, we're famous for producing brilliant new bands, and a lot of them really unexpected. How does that happen? Well, that happens because the band takes a risk of going out, the venue operator takes a risk of putting them on, people take a risk of going and seeing them. Yeah. If you place these external, you know, that underlying thing I talked about, that grassroots pound, if you reduce the available money to the point where people have to start not taking risks, they have to just go for the band that can say, "We're definitely going to be 70 of our friends." I agree with you. It kind of destroys, there's nothing worse than being in a room where, you know, a fantastic new act that you've never seen before is performing in front of 150 people who are waiting to see five other bands that have just got 30 mates each. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. You know, that doesn't work. What we really want is risk taking and everything else, but then alongside that underlying thing, you know, in that kind of freewheeling debate idea, there's a huge bunch of other things that have happened, you know, like, we do a lot of work on this and the impact of student loans on the behaviour of students and the kind of decision making they make isn't really factored into why aren't students choosing to go to as many gigs as they did before. The collapse of student union bars, putting on live music, that's related to that student loans, but it's also related. It's also related to the funding of universities and how much money they had to employ people to do that kind of thing. Then you've got, believe it or not, the smoking ban. Oh, yeah. You know, that actually, that changed the pattern of behaviour within venues and made people leave and do different, you know what I mean? So there's all these kind of factors in society. The one thing that we can be confident on, because it comes up in every survey ever done, is that the first independent, autonomous decision that most young people make still relates to music. That's the number one thing that they define themselves individually by. There's another thing happening in society which is quite interesting for me and probably for you as well, because I think your experience with music is similar to mine. In the era I grew up with, well, certainly in my particular era, I knew I was a teenage mod and that I didn't like people who liked heavy metal, you know, and then later on I decided that I really liked heavy metal and that meant that I didn't like pop music. And I think there is this kind of very weird contagion, which is, I think, is positive in some ways for the sound of music. There's lots of interesting music being made that you wouldn't ever have heard before, but that isn't very good for that kind of tribal instinct. Like, this is our band. Yes. You know, having said that, I would say that right now there is an incredible new sound coming out of these venues epitomized by not one genre, but a kind of really mashed up approach to music, which is kind of sounding uniquely British. And I pick out people like Bob Villain and Nova Twins and Benefits that I saw recently. There's a kind of - it's quite difficult to define it as being one thing, but there is a really excitement, there's an excitement around those bands. And, you know, Bob Villainter is selling out absolutely everywhere. Nova Twins, you know, they're selling every ticket. Benefits have suddenly lifted up. Yard Act, you know, that act is suddenly selling out everywhere. There's a huge enthusiasm for that, and that is coming out of the grassroots venues. Right. It's the same kind of tribal element that you and me perhaps were more familiar with. I don't know. I mean, I saw Yard Act play at the Bruton Social Club, and four songs in, the entire crowd started chanting "Yorkshire, Yorkshire." So I guess that's quite tribal.
Speaker 1Yeah. Yeah, that's super interesting. I hadn't thought of that before. That's a really interesting point to make, actually, because, yeah, I mean, for me growing up as a teenager, you know, like, music was the sole thing I identified myself by. And it's that kind of that gang that you're a part of, like you say, whether you're a mod or or a meddler, or, you know, an indie guy, or a progger, you know, like, that was very much my thing. And it still very much is to this day. I mean, I identify myself as a musician, and by the music that I listen to, and therefore by the sort of the club that I attach myself to, it's my identity, you know. So that's very interesting that you, the point you make about the difference of the sort of emerging acts these days, that they don't tend to be attached to any broader tribal association, which is, which I think is awesome, in many ways, because there probably is a tribal association, but it's not one that we would recognise, perhaps, in the same sense that it used to be back in the day, you know?
Speaker 2Yeah, I think, I mean, you know, there are so many little factors. And I think, actually, one of the things I would say is that it's quite easy to become overly focused on any, like, minor one of them. And that's certainly in the music industry. There is an inclination to try and solve, you know, what looks like a simple solvable issue, and not to talk about, which I think is where we come from, we want to talk about the long term strategic point, you know, what, what is happening to music? What does that mean in the years to come? How can we control that in a way that's more beneficial to the future of British music into the future of ours? And we quite often run up against individual single campaigns that are very worthy in themselves. Yeah, I mean, I'll pick out, you know, right now, a lot of artists are very, very vexed, vexatious, I don't know about the merch, the merch charges, right? No, that actually, and I think they're right. Yeah, you know, my, my personal view, not the view of every venue that we represent, my personal view is, ideally, 100% of all merch sold in a venue should go to the artist that's playing. I think that's a good thing. Everybody kind of thinks that. And I want to tackle that. In fact, within ours, we're partners to the Featured Artists Coalition 100% venues, which is a list of venues that don't charge merch fees, and most of our members are on it. But is that really why artists can't earn a living? And the answer to that is no, it isn't. There's, you know, I would, if an artist is being paid a fee, you know, you're not going to get paid a fee, you're not going to get paid a fee, you're not going to get paid a fee, you're not going to get paid a fee, you're not going to get paid a fee, you're not going to get paid a fee, you're not going to get paid a fee, you're not going to get paid a fee, you're not going to get paid a fee, you're not going to get paid a fee. That isn't going to solve the fact that they were being paid 50 quid. No. It's important to solve these issues, but we tend to get obsessed by these small things. And we don't really take a long term view. What do we need these venues to do? For no reason I can understand, the ideal venue operator is going to put on five people wearing the weirdest outfits you've ever seen playing Tibetan nose flute, making mostly white noise, and nobody will know why. But that will increase the cultural envelope of what music is being presented. And somebody will hear that and will be inspired to create the next Ed Sheeran or Adele or Beatles or Coldplay, or whoever it is you want to name, you know, little things that they'll hear something in that that will inspire them to go somewhere else. Have we created the conditions where somebody can put on my ideal wackily dressed five piece nose flute orchestra? No, we haven't. We've created the atmosphere where the ideal act put on a grassroots music venue is a tribute to ABBA. Got you. Yeah.
Speaker 1Yeah, you're bang on. Yeah, brilliantly put as well, man. Yeah, I'm in agreement with everything you're saying. And it's throwing up so many more questions as well. I'm scribbling down as you're talking. Before we come on to solutions, then, because I'm fascinated by your approach to that. I mean, I don't think we need to lay this out for anyone that's going to be listening to this. I don't think that we need to lay this out for anyone that's going to be listening to this. I don't think but just to really hammer this point home. Why is this important? Why is it important to protect these venues? I mean,
Speaker 2for me, it's personally important to me, because this is where I grew up. This has been my entire life. And I'm sure many people listen to this will feel the same way. That venue is, is your social life. It's your point of interaction. It's your, frankly, it's your identity. My, you know, my, my music venue in Tunbridge Wells is responsible for being as completely, I play hours of music every day. The people I talk to are all into music for most of most of probably the people listening to this podcast. Music is our thing. Yeah. Where, where do we get that inspiration? Where do we find that aspirational lifestyle? Where do we become those people? And that's absolutely, absolutely because music is around you. You know, we, we did a thing a little while ago. There's, there's somebody who lives in West, Wales, who's three hours and 50 minutes from their nearest live music experience on public transport. That's not good enough. No, that person is not going to pick up a guitar. They're not going to get into music. So that's why it's important to me. Why is it important to everybody else? Well, I didn't think about it earlier, you know, saying, why do people go out at night? The amount of jobs that revolve around this initial activity, you know, you look at, I think there are, I think there are about a thousand people working on that show. They've all got great jobs. How did, how did they all get into the industry? How did that band get to where they are? How did those jobs get created? And the answer is there were spaces for people to walk into, to look at the lights and say, wow, I bet I can make those look good. I bet I could do that job. But if you don't see it, if you don't see it, you can't be it. So these venues being in there, being in our communities creates aspiration. It creates economic activity. It creates literally tens of thousands of jobs in our industry. If you think about our music industry, which is 5.5 billion pound a year industry, just in the UK alone, let alone worldwide, how much of that is built on a base pyramid, the foundation stone, which is the activity in those venues. So it's all built from there.
Speaker 1And, you know, some of the best times I've ever had in my life of being shoulder to shoulders, packed into some underground sweaty dungeon, like three foot, you know, 10 inches away from the lead singer of my new favorite band, you know, it's unforgettable experiences, man. And, you know, you, you, you could literally, you could stand off a mile away from the next Coldplay in a stadium. If you want watching them on a screen or the back of somebody else's camera, you know, or you can remember the time when you saw him five years ago, you know, literally able to reach out and touch them. Mike stand, you know, face to face with, you know, the next iconic new band. It's just, they, they all come through that route. Every single last one of them, nobody goes from playing in their bedroom to, you know, playing a stadium where we're possibly, you know, a few exceptions, but most decent bands and artists come through that route. And it's just, it's fucking awesome. You know, it's, uh, you, you, you've laid out the economics of it, which, you know, which always is important. People like to hear that as well. But, you know, as a band coming up in that circuit, it's where we cut our teeth. It's where we got good. It's where we developed our craft. It's where we learned to be a live band rather than a good idea in a studio, you know, as where you build your fan base and that, that, that emotional connection between the audience and, and the band and, and as a spectator, as an audience member, it doesn't get better than seeing a band up close, hot and sweaty, loud with a fucking warm beer in your hand, you know, and, uh, and, and, and, and the best band you've never seen in your life two feet away from your face, you know?
Speaker 2Exactly. Yeah. I mean, they're all, you know, people are really gearing up for the summer festivals, you know, well, let's look at the headlines, those festivals, anywhere you want to look, go look at the headlines, those festivals, and I, and come back to me and I'll give you the names of the venues that those, those festival headliners, whoever they are, where they built their careers, every single one of them without fail. Yeah. Liam, Liam Gallagher, you know, just headlined two, two shows at Nebworth. He played in my venue in front of 116 people. First, first Oasis tour, first national tour they did for the first single. In fact, do you know what? They didn't even headline. They were a double headliner with White Out and on the particular night they played in the Tunbridge Wells Forum, they played, they played first. What was your venue then in Tunbridge Wells? Was it, was it the Forum?
Speaker 1Yeah, it's the Tunbridge Wells Forum. Ah, I played there back in 2015 in my old band, Koshira. Yeah, we played there on our last, uh, we came back from Europe doing a tour with Snot and we played there as one of our first UK dates, I think.
Speaker 2There you go. You see, I mean, that's, it'd be 30 in, in 2023. Uh, myself and my partner down there, Jason, we, we founded that venue in an old toilet as, as people are very fond of hearing, um, because it actually was a toilet. It was built in 1932. Um, it's now a not-for-profit entity, um, run by a community interest company. We, we're in the fortunate position, myself and Jason, that we own the building. Right. You know, but, but that's very unusual. Only 7% of the people in the UK that operate one of these buildings own the building. But that venue is really, you know, honestly, I, I can talk about with a great deal of love and affection and, and the people down there I talk about with a great deal of love and affection, even when I'm saying terrible things about them, because, because it's a, it's a magnet for every freak and weirdo and personal life style within 20 miles radius. You can walk into that building anytime you like, and you're going to see somebody wearing extraordinary shoes who wants to be a designer. Somebody, you know, you're going to see somebody wearing extraordinary shoes who wants to be a designer. Somebody taking photographs, who wants to be a photographer, somebody making a video who wants to be a video. It's just full of creative people making stuff happen. It's a, it's an absolute joy those sort of venues you know just just they're so inspirational and they just they did they produced so much i can't understate it yeah you know adele is a is a billion dollar generating artist adele played timbridge wars forum supporting jack peniarte for the obligatory 50 pounds and performed for about 18 people at about 8 30 jesus you know you don't you don't get to be adele headlining these massive events you know if you don't put in the work at the beginning if you don't know how an audience works if you don't know how the dynamics of music works that's how you you can't be taught that in a classroom you get taught it because somebody stares at you and tells you you're not doing it very well you do it
Speaker 1better oh yeah you yeah you have to support a band and you think hey we're awesome and then you and then you see the other band you're like holy shit we got some work to do you get torn apart by an audience because you know in those venues man people you know people will let you know if you suck yeah probably slightly too much yes yeah yeah yeah this is the best times man i mean south wales at the moment unfortunately is seeing a dramatic shift towards the cover artist and you know and you know musicians got to earn the money and stuff and i've done my fair share of that as well um but it's you're watching somebody sing you know somebody else's songs yeah you know it can be a good crack if you you're getting drunk one night whatever with your pals but i mean it's a totally different experience seeing some original bands playing their own music like you say with that you've got that hub of all the different types of people that it attracts as well to those sorts of environments it's a totally different experience and i and i think like um many people who haven't been having who haven't had a sort of like history in that world i really think are missing out and they would they would thoroughly enjoy it if there was a kind of resurgence of that sort of circuit again you know
Speaker 2yeah i'm missing out is is the two key words you know i i i'm with you i i've lots of friends and colleagues who work in the festival industry and i know that people really love it it leaves me a little bit cold festivals and that's that's not to knock them i know how important they are but you know i just went and saw my chemical romance performing in warrington and they were great you know and it was a fantastic crowd lovely crowd people really celebrating the fact that they were back yeah and it was you know it was a really great experience and i think it's a really great experience you know it was really nice just wasn't for me i'd like to see them in a 300 capacity room where whether the singer's sweat hits me in the face dude
Speaker 1you just echoed exactly what i said last saturday when i saw them in cardiff i watched them on the screen because i i you know i couldn't see the band it was so far away you know the sound was it was an outdoor gig so the sound was ropey you know and the band were on fire you know but i mean i was effectively just watching it on the telly and i i'm totally with you i would much rather see him in a smaller venue you know it's it's just nothing like it man it's nothing like it and i'm sure that you know i'm totally with you i would much rather see him in a smaller venue you know it's just most of the people listening to this don't need to be told that i'm sure they probably 100% agree but i think it's important to remind ourselves what we stand to lose if we let this rot continue with these venues closing down correct
Speaker 2yeah absolutely one to do michael mcronus would have sounded much better in fuel rock club dude that would have
Speaker 1been fucking insane yeah that needs to happen man uh well fuel is a perfect example of what we're talking about so so let's let's talk about solutions and i'm really keen to to hear what you've got to say on this because what can a club like fuel do to to keep its doors open in the current climate
Speaker 2um well external to us we're constantly talking to government talking to local authorities about how important these venues are what role they play in getting people out what role they play in talent development and there are a number of things that government local authorities funding agencies etc can do um to support these venues in the work they're doing and that's starts with recognizing frankly that the work they're doing is important you know and i think that that has definitely changed in in the last five to six years we started this charity in 2014 the first thing we had to do was was think of a better name for it because at that point everyone was calling the toilet circuit yeah or dive bars or you know in australia they call them sticky carpet venues which i really like that's a great very automatic piece there's nothing wrong with that yeah you know but um so we originally the first thing was to change the language we came up with that phrase grassroots music venues that's been really heavily adopted now yeah you see people talking about that all the time yeah that means that you can imagine somebody jumping up in parliament or in you know the local council and saying i'm concerned about grassroots music venues in a way you couldn't imagine them saying that you know that was toilet circuit yeah um what can they do they could they they could make that more supportive of what the work that this is doing they could recognize that this is research development and tax it in the framework that we normally do that you know in the uk there are research and development tax incentives for every sector except culture right if you are investing in the development of nuclear weapons they will give you 120 tax break wow so of the money you put in you can write off 120 of it against tax you actually get effectively the tax gives you money to research that if you're researching the best new rock band then they tax you at 20 the at just on the ticket alone plus everything else that make any sense you know
Speaker 1we're that's a very important distinction because effectively what they're saying is hey this is a private enterprise so you're subject to this you know the usual rules of business but what you're saying is it's actually r and d effectively for the billions that then go on to be generated by the successful artists that come through that route yeah
Speaker 2exactly that you know we actually we did one piece of work which puzzled most people which we created a new unitary value which was an ed sheeran what is the value of an ed sheeran i love it economy and and how do you produce an ed sheeran and the answer is ed sheeran played 366 shows at grassroots level before he broke into the the point of the touring circuit the kind of academy group venues where he started to make money so the 366 shows were lost making to create an artist that now is headlining multiple stadiums around the world you know probably one of the biggest selling live music in the world of the 366 shows he played 150 of those shows took place in venues that are now closed down wow so once you know that an ed sheeran is worth x amount of money and x amount of economic activity if you close 150 of those those opportunities for him for us to create an ed sheeran then you've lost whatever the percentage that is over 30 of your chance to create an ed sheeran if you create if you are creating one ed sheeran every three years you're now creating one every four and a half years right right right you know so that's the sort of economic modeling that the government can understand and hopefully the music industry can understand as well yeah you know what i often ask people you know people say well you know couldn't this be done more economically couldn't it be done but you know could it be done more professionally that's that's a lovely topic and the answer is no because there's no formula under which we create these new acts that are generally you know genuinely groundbreaking and new and innovative it's it's the willingness of people to take risks with their venue take risks with their art take risks with their decision on ticket buying there isn't if there was a formula 1965 john lennon said was asked what is it the beatles have got that makes them so successful and he replied i don't know but if i did know i'd create four new bands with that quality then i wouldn't have to i wouldn't have to be in the beatles which is which is a fantastic point isn't it if we knew what it was absolutely precisely knew what it was then people a music would would you know we wouldn't have to spend all this time we just go okay here's another arena headlining act that you're absolutely going to love yeah but but actually i mean this is a personal viewpoint isn't the viewpoint of my organization my personal viewpoint is the more that we imagine people know what they want and we imagine that what we've got is what they want and we replicate that the more bland and mainstream music becomes yes you know the more acts we sign who are a bit like ed sheeran and the more songs that we write with a team of writers and a computer that are aping stuff that's already successful the less interesting music gets yeah i literally want to go and i want to see see bob villain playing a 300 capacity room because i've never heard of him before and maybe it won't get maybe it won't headline glastonbury maybe it won't get a number one in the charts although it did pretty well but it is expanding the the cultural envelope of what it is that people are
Speaker 1listening to yeah and that's why we need these spaces because in the music industry the major labels left to their own devices or are only interested in replicating the next big thing you know okay hey so this ed sheeran thing worked out let's let's just you know do another 100 of those and and you know take the money to the bank sort of thing but that's that's why we need these safe spaces where people can take risks and you know and to to create the you know the next bob villain and the next nova twins you know that's why separate to the major music industry model we need down here on you know on planet earth where the rest of us you know are doing our thing and and honing our craft and creating our you know our melting pot of of the next the next big sound we need these we need we need the space where we can do that and i and and the these small local venues are are that melting pot
Speaker 2great great art in whatever format it is is intrinsically linked to failure yes no nobody nobody woke up and and drew the mona lisa that didn't happen you know that they they they drew a lot of very poorly drawn animals when they were kids first before they learned you know it's just it's it's it's inherently built on lack of success yeah the great great art and music especially you know all of the bands that i've really got into in the last 30 years you know probably started making a terrible rap frankly yeah you know and and people didn't like them you know it took it's very ed sheeran i i saw his shows on his early career he wasn't very good you know you might not like him now i don't know that's your personal preference but he's very professional in what he does and he writes songs that people really connect with people was he doing that when he was 16 hauling his acoustic guitar around venues and popping up and playing cover versions no he wasn't you know it's just that he learned how to control an audience he learned what was connecting with people by being out there and doing it yeah he's one of our most sustainable and resilient artists with the largest fan base because he put the work in well
Speaker 1i spoke about this with tom gray yesterday we were talking about how for a small island our our ability for music is is world-class a second to none you know i said to thomas said you know we suck at many things you know cooking weather you know but i mean when it comes to music for a small little islands we know we are you know we are we are the world champions yeah well
Speaker 2well well above our weight you know the the financial return to the treasury the branding return you can walk into you can walk into an isolated african village and show them a picture of the beatles and they know that oh yeah yeah yeah you know i i think successive governments have frankly failed to understand that you know they do these they do these great big events you know we've just had the jubilee weekend i'm sure lots of people enjoyed it good on them was was it really representing what brand britain is to people around the world in a in a way that's progressive and and addressing the 21st century or was it that kind of slightly internal celebration of our past yeah yeah and i think people are into this scene and people are into the kind of music that you and me we're into we're thinking about what am i going to like about this scene and i'm like next week you know what am i what am i going to like in five years time that's always in my mind but if somebody says to me there's this great new band i try and go and see them you know that's that's that's a theme of and and that's a theme of the people who work in this sector if you give them the infrastructure if you give them the tools that they need they will constantly choose to put on risky stuff that they don't know whether it's going to work on because that's their exciting part
Speaker 1as well like if you think if someone tells you about this awesome new band you know you don't have to pay 120 bucks to sit at the stalls of a stadium you can pay a tenner and go go along and check it out you know and if if you don't like it well then hey you got a tenner and a few beers out with your friends and saw some bands you know it's not a big loss you know to take that risk at that
Speaker 2level exactly i you know and i think the other thing is to say honestly as i say nice free winning conversation that i actually really enjoyed i enjoyed talking to you because let's let's talk everybody's really concerned about climate change and concerned about carbon neutral carbon neutral live music activity do you know what the main cause of of carbon impact is of live music audiences of live music events it's the audience travel to the venue really that's the number one thing that's actually a big factor radiohead did a load of work on this when they were touring america about 10 years ago and the answer that came back very quickly was well it's actually the audience traveling to your massive show that's contributing about two-thirds of the carbon impact wow okay so what are the what are these small venues got to offer that you walk there you know you walk there that's it you can walk there i mean i think in our in our statistics study we did about four or five years ago about 72 percent of the audience had walked to their local venue walking is cheap there's a cost of living crisis going on walk to your local venue pay 10 quid to get in see a brand new band probably get a higher level of excitement out of that than you will by spending 120 quid to stand at the back of a great big arena that you you had to drive to that is
Speaker 1a yeah that's an amazing point to make i'd never thought of that
Speaker 2yeah how did how did how did coldplay eventually become a carbon neutral band buy electric vehicles and play 300 capacity venues i don't think they're going to do that no that is the genuine answer tell all the audience to walk to the venue make sure the venue is carbon neutral and get there in electric vehicles that's how you'd make it carbon neutral
Speaker 1that is a great point i think that's a great point i think that's a great point i think that's a great a mind-blowing point because that is a you know that is the central issue that the world you know it's the number one issue the world as a whole community is going to have to address whether we like it or not and um that's a fascinating aspect of that which i'd never i it's the first i've heard of that
Speaker 2yeah i mean you know that's as you appreciate we're quite a broad ranging organization right looking for all kinds of things you know we're we're really interested in in equality diversity and inclusion you know how do you build better festival lineups you know how do you build them that represent our communities as they actually are better you know this this has been going on for some time people talking about female representation at festivals yeah festival bookers are much more responding to demand than they are able to lead demand you know you've got if you're in charge of reading and leads which is a hell of a hell of a job hell of a festival to have to book for how many risks can you take you know can you can you really take an artist that doesn't have a history you know and put them headlining the festival because you want to you want to have a festival that's diverse and inclusive it's quite a commercial big commercial risk to take and you know i admire them for what they're trying to do actually i think they're doing a great job but you know what you can do that with the lineup in these in these venues you can say okay you know what does our local community like how do you represent that on stage and you know in these venues you can encourage people to form bands that's another thing these venues do you know you can put on an artist that's encouraging young women to think do you know what i should be the drummer right you know and and then you've got a whole set of female drummers in your local community and then you need to put them on the stage that kind of ignition engine of the kind of change and progression that we want to see that's it's so easy to achieve in our venues if we get the economic framework around them right to enable them to take risks and at the moment you know running a thread all the way through what we've talked about it isn't right we've got we've got private landlords and offshore accounts that are taking money out of these venues to pay themselves for owning the property why have we done that well you know what what a stupid thing to do theaters don't do that community centers don't do it museums and libraries don't do it why are we letting money hemorrhage out of our music community and out of our creative community and out of our local community frankly into the hands of property owners who've got absolutely no interest in what's happening in
Speaker 1that building mark this is this is fascinating i mean this is i'm glad that this has gone in so many different directions because i said i think this is this has been far more broader reaching than i then i i originally sort of sketched out this conversation to go and uh i i apologize a little bit for my part in that because i get a little bit excited and i sort of cut you off and led you in a totally different direction which is a little bit of a different direction but i think we could probably keep going down for the next two hours but i think on the very important point that you were just on there i'm going to try and loop back if we can before i cut you off um you were talking about we were talking about solutions and i think that's really important to to to sort of discuss that now if we can you were mentioning you were talking about you know the right the uh the regulations and the legal side of this and the case to be made you know to to the regulators um if we can pick back up there before i sort of rudely you know directed you elsewhere and get back to the solutions i think this is super important to round off with what we can do about this and then we can sort of um we can come on to then you know how people can get behind this and be involved in help so what are the solutions if we could lay the
Speaker 2case out for that well the community trust is doing a lot of work with government we're doing a lot of work with local authorities um supporting our work and following us on social media and amplifying our message it helps us to do that work we are winning we've made changes to the planning law the number of venues that were closing before the pandemic actually had bottomed out after nearly 20 years of consistent declines finally in january 2020 i was able to stand up and say there were more venues traded in january 2020 than were in 2019 that was an amazing turnaround and it was done because our community has been very very vocal about how important these venues were and then during the pandemic with the save our venues campaign we we we stormed that i don't mean us as me as a charity i mean the whole music community absolutely stormed that we we were so vocal we stood together we really got government action underway there were lots of things wrong with what was done not enough people got support but in fact we lost hardly any venues that epidemic which is a phenomenal piece of work yeah everybody who joined in that campaign we salute you it was amazing while we're doing that while we're talking to government about what they should be doing we have to get our own house in order and the number one solution is we have to change this ownership model until we as a community music community own our venues we're always constantly going to be faced with people being kicked out venues being closed down venues being badly treated by local authorities by developers by whoever else it is because they've got another agenda these spaces are ours we need to own them so to achieve that we've just launched a new organization called music menu properties and everybody literally everybody listening to this can invest in that in that company and become a co-owner of initially nine music venues which we're planning to buy with the investment and eventually we want to we want to remove all of these venues from private ownership and move them into what is effectively a national trust of music venues that is genius spaces that are permanently in our communities owned by our music communities where people like you and me we have an investment and a say in making sure that they remain as music venues we don't run them day to day but we can have some influence over the way that they develop and the way that we ask them to represent our communities who's the best people to own music venues musicians audiences yeah people who work in the venues artists even record labels you know because why because they want there to be music venues and they will they will fight for them and they will defend them in a way that they're never going to be defended whilst commercial landlords so we're asking everybody to please please go to www.musicvenuproperties.com read up on how you you can become an investor we know times are tight for a lot of people but they're not for everybody some people have got money in savings this is a great investment it's got a three percent return on it if you've got money in a building society you'll know immediately three percent right now it's pretty good so you put your money in you're you're not donating it you're you're you're becoming an investor you're becoming a co-owner of the uk's grassroots music venues and you will your your investment in that will last you a lifetime it won't just reward you because you might get three percent back on the money you invest it's going to reward you you're going to get three percent back on the money you invest it's going to reward you because your local music venue will still be
Speaker 1there that is a genius idea i absolutely love that idea it's sort of like a cooperatively owned music circuit these are our venues and and we own them they can't be whipped away from us by some scurrilous kind of you know landlord at the drop of a dime you know i i think that's a genius absolutely genius idea and it's it's actually it it sort of enhances that feeling of um community ownership as well didn't it you know and it takes away all of the economic risks that uh you know we we've been describing and the detrimental effects that hasn't the culture throughout this entire chat it seems like such a simple simple solution i'm amazed that hasn't been thought of before
Speaker 2yeah i mean well just imagine the conversation you're out with a bunch of mates you haven't decided where to go for the evening and then they say well where should we go what are you going to say if you're a co-owner of a music come to my place yeah come to my place i i want thousands of people literally thousands of people in the uk to be able to say come to my place you know i'm not going to say come to my place i'm not going to say come to my place i'm not going to i'm the co-owner of this i want them to walk up outside the building and say i'm the co-owner of this building yeah i've i've got a stake in it i i care enough about it that i've taken a share in this and i i'm i'm taking you here because i think that you should become a co-owner i think you should invest in it as well i think everybody that cares about music should have a small stake in the in that landscape of our venues in the infrastructure in which our music is created where it develops and where it happens i think there's an app
Speaker 1absolutely beautiful idea i love it and i'm keen to get involved myself so what what was the link
Speaker 2again did you say uh go to music venue properties.com um or just search the hashtag own our venues and you'll see lots of activities directing you there um and then you can like i say read through we don't want anybody to invest any money they haven't got don't borrow money yeah you know but it's got quite a low level of early early um investment if you're under under 25 you can invest just a hundred pounds if you're over 25 minimum investment is 200 pounds you can honestly it's i put some money in there because it's a better rate of interest than i was getting on some of my savings you know and it's it's it's just sense you know it's it's it makes common sense it's just like i want to protect it what can i practically do to protect it i can do that i
Speaker 1think it's absolutely a brilliant idea i'm all in on that man it's the first thing as soon as we finish up the day i'm going to go and check out that myself i feel like i
Speaker 2feel like a terrible salesman but i you know i i'm only selling it to you because i believe in it i'm literally i i i believe in this i'm not benefiting you from it in any way i'm not getting paid some amazing salary to tell you to do this i just think this is the solution to protecting the venues that we really all of us in this music community want to see survive for not just next month or next year but for decades to come
Speaker 1beautiful beautiful yeah no i think it's an easy sell to be honest i think it's an easy sell to be honest i think it's an easy sell anyone that's listened to this is going to be sold on that idea i think it's an absolutely brilliant idea uh the idea of sort of like decentralized democratic collective ownership fits very well with my left-wing ideals as well so i'm all
Speaker 2for that man yeah might be quite socialist for some people but you know what actually believe it or not community ownership was in the tory party manifesto yeah
Speaker 1well you know it it appeals to both the right and the left depending on which way you want to spin it you know i mean if you want to own some shit and some shit then you know you can take that right wing approach to it get the right wingers on side or you know if you want to take the more anarcho-syndicalist communistic kind of hippie commune type of mentality as well and we can get the left-winger socialists on on board as well but you know it it ticks all the boxes doesn't it you know so talking about the music venue trust then what can people do to support the broader initiative outside of the uh the ownership aspect that we talked about in terms of the the broader campaign for the regulations and the general sort of um ongoing health of the grassroots venue scene what can people do to get involved and help the music venue
Speaker 2trust um always just keep a tab on musicvenue trust.com which is our main website where we're announcing stuff um it's great to follow us on facebook and on twitter on instagram amplifying our messages when you see them you know we quite often have a little campaign about something and if you can just use your voice to retweet or share or repost um we're not big on petitions um because we know that government don't read them very much and they don't pay much attention to them when you see something from us it's more likely to be to actively get involved so we quite often will ask people to write to their mps about a specific issue um we're very very into direct action we're a bunch of activists who came out of this circuit everybody that works for the trust is is basically driven by the same vision um but we just love music and we want it to be that if you feel like that you can basically take 10 minutes of of a week to to write a letter to your mp to put your voice to something that's happening locally or to get behind something nationally that we're doing i think one thing i've learned in this eight years of doing this work people really underestimate how important their voice is they don't express it loudly enough in the spaces in which it really does make a difference and i think that's one of the things that i've learned in this eight years of doing this i particularly highlight writing to your local council to say how much you love your local music venue instead of writing to complain is an incredibly effective thing to do and writing to your local local mp and telling them how important your local music venue is to you is an incredibly effective thing to do but sometimes it's great to use that around specific campaigns
Speaker 1that we do right brilliant brilliant and and you know if i can chuck my own 10 cents in just get out there and check out these venues man you know like it takes take a take a gamble one night if you think hey let's pop to the you know the the sports bar we normally go to with the cheap beer instead spend 10 pound to go and see cattle smasher or something it might be is that a real band
Speaker 2that's that sounds that sounds like my kind of band if it isn't it should
Speaker 1be you know you know what let's call the band james i'm right in cattle smash cattle smasher there we are when we're doing a gig you can all come and see us and it might turn out to just be the best fucking night of your life
Speaker 2do you know what i've actually i've even got a little bit of time to think about it i've got a little bit of time to think about it concept death metal only the vocalist is a cow you
Speaker 1see you're not you're not gonna get that uh slippery joe's sports bar you know you're not gonna get that you're only gonna get that in your local grassroots venue so you know if you want to see cattle smasher you know which is which is now gonna happen it's now a thing then um this weekend when you go out just pop into your local fucking fuel or whatever or your local you know um tunbridge wells forum and take a gamble man just just get out there and and support these local venues you you could you could support it in all the ways that mark just outlined but you can also support it by showing up taking a gamble and trying something different taking a risk you know out with the three bands you watch you might absolutely fucking fall head in love head over heels in love with one of them and it may it may may change your life and you may and you and as mark said earlier you might be showering in the sweat of the next fucking cold play or muse or whoever you know whoever the the next iconic band is going to be in the next 10 years and you'll be able to look back and say i saw them in tunbridge wells you know to like 18 people when they were getting paid 15 quid and it was fucking awesome so get out there and do that it's good for your soul it's good for this it's good for the music scene and it supports the venues and uh you know you can thank me later great
Speaker 2great salesman great so mark thank you so
Speaker 1much for your time and i thoroughly enjoyed talking to you i feel like we could probably talk for hours but i know that you're a busy man and i've gotta let you go but i've thoroughly enjoyed the chat i really appreciate everything you're doing and i know that everybody listening will as well it's such important work that you're doing and i know that you know you've been a tireless campaigner for a long time now so on behalf of all of the community we salute you and we thank you for what you're doing and hopefully you know everybody listening to this now is going to get involved and amplify and put weight behind this and we can we can fix this scene thanks to the solutions that you've outlined and worked so hard for so on behalf of all of us thank you man we salute you lovely to speak to you james really great conversation thank you mark speak to you soon take care mate thank you mate there we go mark david ladies and gentlemen from the music venue trust how cool was that guy i really enjoyed that conversation yeah like we could have just gone for ages i think i hope you enjoyed that i hope you find it informative and interesting and inspiring and i hope it's made you want to go and dig out wherever the uh those tucked away little grassroots venues are that you haven't discovered yet in your hometown and support not only the local bands but the local venues as well i'm not gonna rant now or ramble or elaborate or riff or anything i don't think there's any need i mean mark's already laid out the case across the board there for what needs to be done and why we got these problems so on that note i'm gonna say adios and good night and i shall see you in the next video next time before i give you one last nag to subscribe to the podcast if you haven't done it yet like literally what is wrong with you just get on it it's one click of a button just do it and please give me your rating click the star button even if you give me one i don't care just give me something man uh leave a review put some comments down and share these things you know spread the word man i think like if you've got musician friends or like music fan friends i think they're going to really enjoy this particular episode so share it on your pages and you know let's get this out there and i shall see you at the front row of the music venue next time of the dog and whistle getting showered in the sweat of cattle smasher really soon until then take care of yourselves love your loads i'll see you next time adios
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