Sound Of Scotland
Venues urge fans to buy tickets for future gigs to keep doors open
Music venues urge fans to support local and live music
KING TUT’S Wah Wah Hut should be celebrating its 30th anniversary right now. The iconic Glasgow venue – the place where, legend has it, an unknown band called Oasis rocked up one night and demanded to be added to the bill – has been shuttered since March, due to Covid-19 regulations.
“We looked at converting our car park and the back lane into an acoustic venue, but the regulations won’t currently allow any music outdoors so we had to shelve that,” says Geoff Ellis, chief executive of DF Concerts, which owns King Tut’s.
“There are plenty of beer gardens around, so we thought our USP could have been some live performances to go along with it – without that, we’re just a car park that would be dressing up a bit.
“But our concern is for the whole ecosystem – not just King Tut’s as a venue, or DF Concerts as a promoter. It’s for all the freelancers who work in live music: the person selling the T-shirts, the sound engineer, the bus driver. We know, and accept, that we will be the last industry back, but in the meantime there’s a real risk that people will end up getting jobs outside of the industry and that experience and skills base will be lost.”
King Tut’s, along with 70-odd grassroots music venues throughout Scotland, received some reprieve in July when the Scottish Government agreed a £2.2 million short-term funding package with sector representatives at the Music Venue Trust (MVT).
MVT’S Scottish coordinator Nick Stewart, who manages Sneaky Pete’s in Edinburgh, said the money would allow venues to cover fixed costs such as rent, insurance and the wages of non-furloughed staff in the short term, while the industry develops a plan to reopen venues safely.
“The activities of grassroots music venues are so pivotal
to what happens further up the music industry chain, but the good news is that the esteem with which this sector is being held is significantly better than anything we’ve seen in the past,” he says. “Five years ago, these venues were called the ‘toilet circuit’.”
Stewart is particularly encouraged that the Scottish Government seems to have recognised that the country’s smallest venues are in a unique position. An extensive
“Our concern is for the whole ecosystem”
survey of its members by MVT found that 87% could not operate in compliance with public health guidance requiring physical distancing “whatever the cost”.
According to Geoff, King Tut’s capacity would be cut from 300 to 30 at a one-metre distancing requirement, and a mere six if a two-metre rule applied. Stewart explains that venues haven’t just been thinking about audiences: with its two-by-four metre stage, Sneaky Pete’s would be reduced to acoustic only, to say nothing of its small entrance and narrow corridors in which “people cannot help but nearly bump into each other”.
In the meantime, fans can support their favourite venues by buying tickets to the shows that they are promoting. “Now is a really good time to look out for the shows that venues have on sale,” Nick says, “even if they may end up being rescheduled.
“If it turns out that the show which was originally booked in for November doesn’t happen until March, the band will still be amazing, and the venue will still be great.
“I know that when we reopen, people are going to be racing to get back – but only when it’s safe to do so.”