There’s a very simple thing you can do to support grassroots music.
Go to a gig.
Not necessarily the band you already love. Go to your local venue, have a look at the listings and take a chance on someone you’ve never heard of.
I recently chatted with Mark Davyd, founder and CEO of Music Venue Trust, and someone who has spent most of his life in and around live music.
Mark’s own story explains a lot about why this matters to him. His relationship with education was, to put it mildly, complicated. Music gave him somewhere to belong, and eventually a direction in life that could easily have gone the other way.
From there came promoting gigs, running a venue, and eventually Music Venue Trust, though what we end up talking about is less about the organisation and more about the strange, fragile ecosystem that lets live music happen at all.
We talk about what Britain stands to lose as grassroots venues close, the frankly bonkers economics of keeping them open, why they still matter for developing new artists, and the people who keep opening the doors despite all of that. We also get into something harder to pin down. Why being in the room when live music happens is different.
That matters to The Third Half. Music has become a bigger part of what we do, from conversations with musicians who’ve been at this for decades to the new and grassroots artists we’re finding through Musician of the Month.
Those artists need somewhere to play.
Those places need us to turn up.
So this conversation comes with a challenge from Mark.
Go to the gig you weren’t going to go to.
You never know what you’ll find.
Listen to the full episode below
https://player.captivate.fm/episode/0f290567-5e09-4d66-87a3-d51f3bad072a/