BBC Radio 6 Music – Steve Lamacq
Mumford & Sons’ Ben Lovett is the founder of Omeara, the latest addition to London’s live music scene. Since opening in October, the 325-capacity venue has already played host to The Pretenders, Biffy Clyro and Mumfords themselves.
Rachel Smillie is the owner and director of The Glad Cafe, a small not-for-profit venue in the southside of Glasgow with a focus on nu-folk and experimental music.
Julian Bigg is the co-owner of the compact and bijou Ramsgate Music Hall, which over the last few years has attracted high-calibre acts such as Neneh Cherry, Wire and The Jungle Brothers to “darkest Kent”. Here’s how they did it.
1. Follow your dreams
Julian: “We had the idea of starting our own venue while driving back from the ATP festival in Minehead in 2012. It was such a pain that there were no gigs close to us [in east Kent]. About six months later we’d bought a property! We really didn’t think it through, but in some ways that naivety worked to our advantage.”
Ben: “Even before the latest round of venue closures it felt like there was a lack of venues in London that approached things as more of a cultural than a commercial enterprise. The dream was to have a venue that hosted seminal performances, that people talked about in the same way as The Marquee or The 100 Club.”
Rachel: “In 2009, my daughter took us to Cafe Oto in London. I was very taken with it, particularly the way it was managing to bring in people from diverse backgrounds and age groups while putting on live music nearly every night of the week. The southside of Glasgow where we’re from certainly didn’t have anything like that. We started putting on gigs in various venues in the area to see if there was an appetite, and that garnered a lot of interest and ideas, so that was the beginning of it all.”
