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BETWEEN DEATH AND REBIRTH: BRISTOL’S MUSIC VENUES AT A CROSSROADS
In the past few years, several Bristol music venues and pubs have been threatened with closure, and many have shut their doors. But recently, new venues have also appeared. So is the city’s music scene at risk? Or is the city undergoing a new transformation?
The first time I wrote about Bristol four years ago, I settled in Stokes Croft. With popular venues like the Full Moon and Attic Bar, Blue Mountain, Lakota, The Love Inn and the Canteen, the street has been the heart of the underground music scene since the 1980s. But today many of these places are threatened with closure.
At Blue Mountain, a powerful developer is planning to demolish and redevelop the site. The campaign Save Bristol Nightlife, created by Annie McGann and Leighton De Burca, aims to ensure that the city council allows new licenses to open up other places “to present the music Bristol loves”.
Stokes Croft is situated within a designated Cumulative Impact Area, which means it’s incredibly hard to get a new a music license for another building. Save Bristol Nightlife thinks that if we are to lose our music venues to developers, we need assurances that new places will be allowed to open to take their place.
The Stokes Croft area has lost the equivalent of a capacity of 10,000 people in the last seven years and that doesn’t count Blue Mountain. Now, Lakota and the old coroners court are also due to be redeveloped.
The planning decision, however, regarding the end of these two historic venues has been put off until July 31, “while the developers tinker with their plans to try and get round the objections”, according to the Save Bristol Nightlife campaign.
McGann said that it is therefore not too late to tell the powers that be that “Lakota and Coroner’s Court are important places for people to celebrate music, dance and have fun”.
She added: “The impact of losing these spaces will be to add to the death of the area as a vibrant centre for independent music and culture, as well as loss of jobs and amenity, especially with the loss of so many other venues within a minute’s walk from these old buildings.”
Stokes Croft nightclub Blue Mountain’s days look to be numbered
But elsewhere in Bristol, good news has emerged for the music scene. On a recent sunny Thursday afternoon near the harbourside, the team behind The Den Dockside was as busy as can be, before a very anticipated triple opening, starting by a concert by Bristol legends Laid Blak.
This new multi-levelled, multi-purpose venue had been in the planning for more than six months by a strong team of creative people, all connected for years in their businesses of barbering, tattooing, food, music and art.
Andy Compton is the musical director at The Den and the founder of the Peng music label. Also a house producer and programmer, Andy has released more than 30 albums and some 135 EPs under many names from his own to his group The Rurals, Compton or LAMP.
Rebecca du Plessis of Beets n Roots cafe on Cotham Hill, has opened the new cafe at The Den. “We’re old school Bristolians, all of us, and we wanted to create a place that could remain genuine and truly communal,” she told me.
Matt Haile is in charge of the barbershop corner, on the mezzanine, with his own business, Level, and was also one of the founders of the unusual collective project, which began after a friend of his offered to rent him the space as a salon.
He decided to team up for other creative to offer a venue that could host many events and services, including album and book launches in the afternoons and private after-parties for future members. That’s when he brought in Andy for the music and Rebecca for the food.
“We’re a strong collective now, with a similar ethos in all the different things we offer, from cocktail to food or music,” Rebecca said. “This is a dream we didn’t know we had. We were inspired by original music venues in Bristol like The Dug Out in the old days, that’s how we brainstormed out name, The Den.”
In the crowd on the opening night were Roni Size, Peter D Rose (the “and” in Smith & Mighty, as Rebecca describes him) and his decade-long friend Mushroom, a former member of Massive Attack, as well as graffiti legend Inkie, who has created a large mural inside.
The opening party of the newly reopened Star & Garter in Montpelier
On the first day of June, the legendary Star & Garter in Montpelier reopened. Run for years by Dutty Ken, In the late 1970s, it hosted many influential DJs, including DJ Derek many nights a week until it had to close in 2018 after the sudden death of Dutty Ken in February 2017.
The pub has now undergone a major refurbishment, removing the colourful graffiti from the front wall but keeping its original feel inside, with photos of the likes of Tony Bullimore and Horace Andy.
New landlord Malcolm Haynes, who set up the Dance Village at Glastonbury Festival and has been a promoter in Bristol for the last two decades, invited Laid Blak and Roni Size to the pub’s opening party, alongside surprise guests comedian Dave Chappelle, musician Damien Marley and magician Dynamo; with Massive Attack’s Grant Marshall and his family among the partygoers in the pub’s front garden.
The Strange Brew team
Another venue due to open soon on the ground floor of a carpark on Fairfax Street is Strange Brew, a project launched by Kerry Patterson, Shaun Tennant, Robert Needham and Leigh Dennis. Their plan is to bring to life “an independent 330-capacity music and arts venue, offering an eclectic programme of live music, exhibitions, club nights and performances with a late-night cafe-bar and record shop”.
The team has secured their alcohol licence and planning permission, and are currently crowdfunding to raise money for the essential building works to get it open, hopefully at the start of October.
“We’re behind SWX, just across from the Island, and close to The Lanes and Rough Trade,” said Kerry. “It feels a bit like a little community is flowering up in that area which is great!”
The team has been putting on parties in Bristol for the last nine years under the name of Dirtytalk. Finding that a lot of the standard club spaces in Bristol didn’t quite work for them, they turned to doing our events in more unusual places to have more creative freedom.
“But it is precarious doing things in one-off spaces,” Kerry added. “And the venue situation in Bristol, i.e. a lack of mid-sized spaces, lots of places closing or under threat, has been a very frequent topic of conversation amongst us, friends and other promoters for years.”
If these new venues bring a breath of fresh air for Bristol’s nightlife, a lot of nightclubs are still threatened to disappear because of real estate projects and property development mainly. Meanwhile, many Bristol music lovers are still passionate about the debate around a potential arena that now looks most likely to be built in Filton.
Hopefully, the positive trend is the result of an organic response to major challenges faced by the night-time economy of Bristol, a city with a particularly strong musical heritage. It is a response that will see a new generation become invested in the music venues of the city to keep live music alive.
Melissa Chemam is the author of Massive Attack: Out Of The Comfort Zone, published by Tangent Books
Main photo: Laid Black play the opening night of Den Dockside – photo by Jon Craig
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link to the website: https://www.bristol247.com/news-and-features/features/between-death-and-rebirth-bristols-music-venues-at-a-crossroads/
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