Independent Venue Week in the Northwest

“Small venues are the lifeblood of British music.” So says Radiohead’s Phil Selway, one of a number of musicians supporting the inaugural Independent Venue Week, a new venture to support those gig spaces that are modest in size, but punch above their weight in terms of enriching your local music scene. “These venues are where the bands meet, form and play,” adds Huw Stephens. “They are where the similar bands from other towns come to play and create scenes. Without them we have nothing to be proud of.”

But these sticky floored joints are facing a challenging time without the booze and mobile sponsors of the bigger venues. Taking place 28 Jan-2 Feb, Independent Venue Week brings together some of the country's best indie venues and aims to ‘highlight the importance of these venues as the heart of their local community, excite people about discovering new music and reignite people’s passion for gig going.’ The project takes the form of a six-day series of live music nights in 18 small venues spread across the UK.

The Liverpool leg takes place 30 Jan at alt-rock club Zanzibar. Wirral-based neo-shoegazers The Red Suns, fresh from the launch of their debut album Thrown Off the Back of Nowhere, will be there with their brooding sound, as will several local bands, including psychedelic-tinged four-piece Go Fiasco, The Liberty Vessels, and The Cheap Thrills.

Soup Kitchen host Manchester’s night – we say night, it begins at 3pm and runs 'til midnight – on 2 Feb and bring the pulsating sounds of Kult Country, self-styled ‘melodramatic pornographers’ Naked (On Drugs), local outfits Francis Lung and Bernard + Edith, and Hoya:Hoya on the decks. Matt Boswell, founder of SWAYS Records, who present the Manchester leg with Generic Greeting, has this to say about the project:

“Independent live venues are incredibly important to bands and labels but a space is only ever as good as the people who are running it. We're lucky that in Manchester and Salford we have great independent venues like Soup Kitchen and Islington Mill that are always up for doing things a bit differently, involving different types of artists as well as the bands. When you get good promoters involved too there's so much scope for creating a spectacle and a sense of occasion, which is very different to some venues, where going to a gig just makes you feel part of a slightly soulless corporate treadmill.”