Quo bass player helps music venue

A STATUS Quo member and hundreds of supporters have helped save a popular Kinross music venue from imminent closure.

Backstage at the Green Room will remain open following a Save Our Venues campaign, which saw nearly £20,000 raised by more than 400 fans of the venue.

John Rhino Edwards of Status Quo and blues musician Danny Bryant took to social media to show their support for Backstage, which faced permanent closure due to the Covid-19 outbreak.

Venue operator David Mundell believes the funding will keep Backstage in business until April 1, when he hopes they will be able to put on live shows again.

He said: “Backstage Kinross is a special, intimate, smallcapacity destination venue. It attracts people from all over the UK.

“Owing to the success of our crowdfunder, we now know that we can survive until April 2021, when we can resume live gigs in Kinross.

“It’s such a relief – many thanks to everyone who supported us.”

Backstage Kinross was one of 30 grassroots music venues highlighted by the charity Music Venue Trust (MVT) last month as being in imminent danger of permanent closure.

Backstage is the first of the 30 to have secured enough funding to save it.

Mark Davyd, CEO of the Music Venue Trust, said: “We are absolutely delighted that Backstage has been saved and moved on to the MVT green list of venues that are safe until March 31 2021.

“We set out to save 30 venues, this is the first one and we are determined to do the same for the other 29.

“We want to thank everyone in the local community and in the music community that supported the Backstage campaign.

“We can prevent the permanent closure and loss of every single one of these spaces.”

In the last eight months since lockdown began, MVT has raised more than £3 million in donations.