So, you’re thinking of starting a music venue?

The inimitable Tim Honsby

I’m very proud to announce my first ever guest blog up here. It’s courtesy of the fantastic, acerbic wit and honesty of a long time hero of mine. Tim Hornsby has run and owned most every venue of note (no pun) in Yorkshire, run and promoted shows including the biggest of big names from Nirvana to Oasis, Snow Patrol to Aereogramme… and the odd Hope and Social show to boot. Enjoy!

Don’t!

No, I mean it.  Stop RIGHT there and stay with the day job.

Eighteen years, twelve thousand bands, a million pints, a stroke and penury later … and I’m still doing it.  But I was lucky enough to have three daughters who could live without seeing their Daddy most nights and a partner without whose love, support, bloody hard work, cooking and cunning I would have been floating face down long ago.  Read on …

WHY do you want to do this?

Behind the bejewelled curtain lies a forest of predators quite willing and able to relieve you of your savings, overdraft and money you will beg and borrow along the way.  As the old gambling proverb says, only bet if you can afford to lose it.  But you still want to do it, yeah?

Gallows - pic courtesy of Tim Hornsby

Think you’re going to spend your days feet on the desk sipping the rock’n’roll bourbon of choice (don’t know what it is?  Oh dear) and sifting through demos?  Passing idle comments from your lofty position as gig-giver like, “Nah, a bit too Pixies” and “Very Beatles meets The Fall, I get it”?

… Nope, as a greenhorn you’ll be pounced upon as a greenhorn by agents, inflating fees and riders with glowing testimonials about their new band’s spot play on XFM or a paragraph in the NME.  A veritable Niagara of out-of-town acts will fill your In-Box with sincere pleas for a gig, promising coach parties, a fantastic night for your customers (who won’t come) and a request for £50.

Local bands will, by and large, play the same game but mindful of your place in the community will, I’m happy to say, press gang their friends and family in to paying £3 to hear their we’re-the-next-Oasis/Beatles/Nirvana pleas until they overplay the town and, nowadays, eschew the hard work of flesh-pressing promotion for a simple worthless message, “Check our Myspace for details.”

But more of that later.

The Fire Officer will (quite rightly) measure your exits in microns and the Environmental Health will canvass every bugger in the neighbourhood for their musical tastes related to volume/nuisance whether or not they are already sited amongst fun pubs with the windows open, a taxi rank, burger vans with noisy queues and, of course, the emergency vehicle (nee nah nee nah!) route.

Under-age drinkers will magically appear in the your dark corners, girlfriendless bores will complain about your musical taste and ticket prices, band stickers will appear on your framed signed Arctic Monkeys first headline tour poster before it is eventually stolen, your money/hair/conscience/libido (delete as appropriate) will slink down the post punk plughole, and EVERYBODY wants to be on the guest list.

So why start a venue?

Yann Tiersen - Pic Via Tim Hornsby

For the perfect moments that make it all worthwhile. For me, John Martyn at Fibbers when the place was packed and as I stood stageside I swear the audience levitated slightly when he played Over The Rainbow. A Spine Tingling Moment.  Those times yes, obvioulsy, but also when folks say to me, “I’ve just had the best night ever – thank you thank you thank you” they’re the moments that make all the above melt away… for a time. When you feel like you’ve had a part in making things happen, that’s the point.  That and stepping outside my glass house every day and chucking bricks at anybody passing by.  Give me a parapet and I’ll stick my head above it.

There’s more bad stuff. Plenty more, but I sense as you pick your groovy colour scheme, mull over Kerrang and get ready to be the next John Peel … you’re not listening.