Sugar Club

Turning 21

“The Sugar Club just bursts with activity. I don’t think there’s any other venue I know of where in the space of a week you could go to a live podcast, a club night, a film screening and a brass band in concert. We’ve had the pleasure of launching three of our concert projects there over the past two years and we’ve always had an uproarious reception there. It’s an important and valued venue on the Dublin scene and long may it continue to host great events.”

Glasshouse Ensemble

After decades of cowboy club operators and barely legal debauchery, Leeson Street’s reputation was dreadful in the ‘90s. While we were in the build, I’d be ringing up booze reps to try and do some trade with them. Once I’d say I was calling from Leeson Street, most of them would either just hang up or never got back to me. The few who did actually come and see the space would look at me perplexed when I said that we wanted to serve these bizarre concoctions known as cocktails in what was effectively a forgotten cinema that had been collecting dust for 13 years. Then when we finally secured the all-important theatre licence in order to serve alcohol, finding high quality acts was difficult. Back then, the club was much smaller and the only way to make it commercially viable was to promote all the entertainment ourselves. This was my background so I knew lots of musicians, some of whom had bands already and others I had to create bands for them so that we could roll out the types of sounds conducive to a cocktail atmosphere. My first calendar was starting to come together, but I needed something unique to finish it off. By pure fluke, I had been strolling down Grafton Street and could hear classical guitarists beautifully belting out Metallica. I approached them and introduced myself to a lovely Mexican couple named Rodrigo and Gabriela. While I had no Spanish and they didn’t have much English, we somehow managed to strike a deal and they opened every Friday and Saturday night for a couple of years for us, becoming hugely popular. Everybody adored them. We happily sponsored their first album and secured their work visas. Seeing them now as global stars is a joy.

Looking back, I love that I made so many great friends there whom I still see regularly. Some of my favourite moments include the CD that the resident DJ Aidan Kavanagh mixed for us as a Christmas gift for our regulars in 2000 and the week in 2011 when in the space of three days we hosted a massive sweaty rave with Lil Louis, followed by a private opera and then a live Today FM presidential debate with all the candidates. I’m still a big Michael D fan.

Oisin Davis Great Irish Beverages & General Manager of the Sugar Club (1999-2012)

I have worked on and attended hundreds of shows in The Sugar Club, it is a great venue that constantly boxes above its weight in relation to talent procurement, too many names to mention here, but heavyweights like James Murphy, Lee Fields, Sharon

Jones and Snarky Puppy stick out in my mind. The production is world class, lovely Function 1 sound system, not to mention the uber cool selection of cocktails which are totally fab and the team behind it are all big music fans. Since the refurb it is really enjoying a golden period and long may it continue.

Johnny Moy

Over the course of our adventures across the many and varied venues in Dublin town, The Sugar Club has increasingly stood out for the flexibility and warmth of the atmosphere in there. All that wood, and jazzy tiered seating makes for a comfortable, and for once, an artist focused alignment, which puts the show front and centre. Some people don’t like the mix of seating and dancing set up – but I actually love it – I like that people can arrive early, sit and chat with friends, and still roll on down those steps and get loose on the dance floor (or on the tables, as has been witnessed!) as the night progresses. It has a little touch of class too, and it’s an actual venue, not a bar with a stage shoehorned into it.

That besides, and most importantly, The Sugar Club is run, not just by numbers, but by that rarest of unicorn in the Dublin venue scene – an actual music lover. Mark and the ChoiceCuts gang have stuck to their guns throughout the years, and their commitment to a broad palette of amazing music, while operating as an independent, is nothing short of inspirational. This love for the game seeps into the experience as a promoter, and as a musician, again, the experience is artist and music led, and that makes for a comfortable connection between the audience and the act, and I would hope that it’s a point of kindred contact between the ChoiceCuts and Homebeat vibe.

Homebeat highlights would definitely be James Holden (2018) Christian Loffler (2019) but my own personal highlight was a very magic evening with Ethiopian jazz legend Mulatu Astatke (2018) – a moment of pure magic, and a typical ChoiceCuts flavour.

Emmet Condon Homebeat

The Sugar Club is a local treasure in Dublin’s increasingly bland nightlife landscape, there’s nothing else that comes close to it. The unerring consistency in their booking policy is impressive to say the least. For me the venue works best in two modes, either in fully seated, intimate concert mode or packed to the rafters, when the whole venue seems to heave along with the dance floor… anything in between doesn’t really do it for me. It’s hard to imagine a Dublin without the Sugar Club, it’s an institution at this stage and that’s no mean feat. It’s got just the right amount of glam red curtain New York jazz club and dirty ‘ol town Dublin City with the lads.

Louis Scully Discotekken/Woweembeem

I started renting the venue for live shows back in 2004, kind of moving into soul, funk and jazz which was a bit of a departure for the place moving away from DJs to having 12 or 13 people on stage. It gave me a penchant to do more live shows, wherever you were you could always see what was going on in the room. You’d get a crowd that may not go to other venues also. I worked there sporadically putting on 10 to 15 events a year for a decade. I went away around 2012 and when I returned decided I needed to take over a venue. The Sugar Club was on my wishlist.

I sat down with the venue. There was a mutual admiration and appreciation from the get-go. I left the meeting taking over basically. From there, it was far more challenging than I ever imagined it could be. It was mid-recession (January 2013), there was no trade and no real value put on hiring the venue. There was no real mid-week business you could rely on. In hindsight I should have closed it to reopen it but decided to get my hands dirty. It took about two to three years to kind of get a grip on what the model should be. And now, I’m in another wave of transforming it.

There’s a repertoire of events that people like - cinema events, corporate events, live events, DJs, live podcast talks, kids movies, late night concerts …it’s harder to wake up every day and do something different but it keeps it interesting for everyone.

Favourite shows: Charles Bradley, Thundercat, BADBADNOTGOOD, Gregory Porter, Hiatus Kaiyote, James Murphy DJing, Osaka Monaurail, Erykah Badu, Candi Staton, Macy Gray, Shuggie Otis…

Mark Murphy The Sugar Club

I have some crazy memories from the Sugar Club. First up is seeing Erykah Badu simply lifting the roof on the club in March of 2018. It was the party associated with the release of my book Ghostnotes: Music of the Unplayed and she showed up in Dublin Airport with a broken foot. Needless to say I was nervous as to how this would work but when she hit the small stage and began, all of our worries were banished. In such an intimate venue, where the front row were all women, almost half Afro-Brazilian, she simply fell into a completely familiar mode. It was like being in her living room sharing music, singing along. I have seen Erykah many many times and nothing came close to this.

The Sugar Club offers an intimacy and community that few other venues anywhere compete with. Hearing Thundercat retell stories in Los Angeles of his shows at the Sugar Club and then verifying them on Whatsapp with Murphy makes me homesick. Following Scary Eire reunions online at the Sugar Club makes me homesick.

Mark has supported my work for the home audience for many years before the Sugar Club. But since he took over, the club has become a home for all the elements of the culture that are important to me. It encourages and fosters an audience for music, but in an intimate space that allows you to experience performers, musicians, DJs, spoken word artists up close, amongst peers in an unparalleled way. There’s nothing like this in Los Angeles.

B+ photographer Filmmaker

What makes The Sugar Club a special venue is the fact that it has hosted some of the world’s most diverse and creative artists. It has been a conduit of music from around the world into the Irish fabric and community, allowing a glimpse of foreign cultures to be exposed in positive and entertaining light. It is a great venue that constantly boxes above its weight in relation to talent procurement, too many names to mention here, but heavyweights like James Murphy, Lee Fields, Sharon Jones and Snarky Puppy stick out in my mind. I hope it continues to open doors.

Gabriel Hubert Hypnotic Brass Ensemble

The Andrews Sisters Brothers(DJs Przem and Piotrek) would always play Harry Belafonte’s Jump in the Line. The conga would begin on the dance floor, head up the stairs, through the bar and back down the other stairs gaining more and more people till it would double up and the whole room would end up on the dance floor in a frenzy.

Anna Taylor Film Fatale