Hello intrepid reader,
What follows is a modified version of an email I sent to my mailing list subscribers last night. If you’d like to receive email updates from me to find out what I’m doing, what I’m thinking, when I’m touring or when I’m releasing music, sign up here.
I don't like to take up too much of people's time, so I'll try to be brief (let's see if I can manage it).
This guy doesn't even have a face and I STILL know that he's not convinced. Neither am I.
Sadly, due to low ticket sales, the gig I was due to play at Apollo Audio on Friday of this week has been cancelled by the venue. I'm told that anyone who bought tickets will receive a full refund and I wanted to get the word out straight away just in case you were planning to make the trip to the show.
I definitely don't begrudge the venue for this at all. Apollo Audio is a working music studio with pretty massive overheads and razor thin margins (I remember discussing running costs with Billy, the guy running the show there and, friends, it is NOT cheap!), so they have reluctantly taken the decision to pull the show in order to not run at a potentially massive loss for the evening.
It's a fairly open question as to what the problem was with shifting tickets for this show. Truth be told, I'm sure that it's a combination of a lot of different things, but that's not the main thing I wanted to talk about. No, what I ACTUALLY want to talk about is this:
This is not an isolated incident.
It's no secret that the music industry has been faced with these problems all over the country. The Music Venue Trust has been screaming from the hills about the gathering storm for years now. 2023 saw 125 live music venues in the UK close their doors for good - a whopping 16% of all live music venues across the country.
That is a chilling statistic.
Some of you may know that I spent my youth at a music venue in Harlow, my hometown in Essex, called The Square. I was a young, awkward kid at 14 years old, unsure of who I was or where I fit in. Then, thanks to (among other things) my late grandma pointing my mum in the direction of The Square's Rock School programme, I found my sanctuary. A place where the misfits, the weirdos, the outcast and the damned could all co-exist in this 275-ish capacity music venue on the corner of the town and just...be ourselves.
There were no dress codes, no pre-conditions to entry, no real expectations placed upon you. All you needed was open-mindedness, respect, tolerance and to follow my punk rock hero Frank Turner's first rule: Don't Be A Dick.
(Honestly though, there were a couple of dickheads in there, but they usually got barred pretty quickly).
The Square closed it's doors for good in January 2017 after the land it was on got sold out from underneath it and was torn down by developers in 2018. It is now an empty lot. Every time I drive past the site, I am simultaneously sad and furious.
Not for myself - I had a bloody great time, built the foundation of the man I am today and made a tonne of memories.
No, I'm furious on behalf of the 14-year-olds of today. The awkward kids who don't feel like they belong anywhere. The Square was a lifeline for me and my peers (and I have no doubt that, for some of them, that lifeline was FAR MORE literal than it was for me). Where on Earth are these kids supposed to go now?!
“So what’s your point, Dan?”
That's a bloody good question! I'll try to get to the point now!
Stories like the one about The Square are sadly becoming more and more common all over the UK and the pace is only getting faster (remember, 125 closures last year alone!).
It is really simple when it comes to these venues: Use it or lose it.
We need to make sure that these places are getting filled up with music lovers (that's you and your friends) checking out all of the bands that are just starting out on their journey. That means getting out to your local live music nights and taking a chance on a band or bands that you've NEVER heard of.
And yeah, some of those bands are going to be dreadful. I'm not gonna lie about that. I've seen some utter stinkers out there.
But every once in a while, you see something truly remarkable. A performance that utterly captivates you. A song that you feel sure was written just for you. You have found your new favourite band and you will not rest until ALL of your friends have joined the cult alongside you (and then get really pissed off when none of them like it as much as you do, but that's beside the point).
And yes, to tie it all back to where we started, it means buying advance tickets to the shows wherever you can.
Venues need the confidence to put these nights on without worrying that this is the show that will tip things over and force them to close their doors for the last time if they don't pull it. Advance ticket sales are HUGELY important to steady the nerves of venue management and promotors (and, to be honest, it keeps the artists' blood pressure at a much healthier level too!).
“Is he STILL going?!”
Well, what do you know! I utterly failed to keep that brief!
Thank you for coming to my TED Talk!
Find out when I’ll ACTUALLY be playing music by checking out my tour dates here.
I’ll see you all soon.
D