On The Trail: Tenement TV Turns Five

Five years have flown. To Tenement TV founders Chae Houston and Jamie Logie it feels like only yesterday that they stumbled upon a simple yet ingenious idea: to capture the flavour of local music talent in their tenement living room, with the architecture as iconic and unique to Glasgow's West End as the city's thriving indie scene.

So, how did the idea for Tenement TV come about? How has it grown?

Houston explains, "I was in a band and we had done a thing called Balcony TV in Dublin; one camera on a balcony and one microphone that picks up the whole band. We'd also seen other sessions online, even programmes like Later with Jools Holland. Sitting up in the flat, we'd been saying it for a few years that this would be a great wee place to have a band playing.

"So we just set up a simple website, got a local buzz band, The Imagineers – who then went on to do the Craig Ferguson show in America. They were our first ever session; it seemed to go quite well. Then we ended up getting bands like Bastille and Gabrielle Aplin, and they kicked us off internationally."

Five years later, Tenement TV has cemented itself into a veritable international juggernaut, showcasing Scottish bands and bringing globally acclaimed artists to Glasgow. "We're sitting at five million views at the moment, but only a million of them are from the UK," Houston calculates.

"We have a million from the USA, half a million from Brazil. Also Canada, Australia, Asia... So our local music scene is being picked up abroad. That's the whole ethos of Tenement TV and [it's] why I started it, to get all these great Scottish bands some international exposure."

"We grew into a music website with reviews, news and new music articles, and we've gone on to do a bit of travelling; outside sessions, becoming festival partners with T Break, T in the Park as well. We went over to SxSW last year. We went with some of the Scottish bands and managed to film some American bands as well. So over the years it's become a place for discovering new bands, and bands that go on to do really big things. They play in our sitting room and then go off to play much bigger venues."

Before you invite Bastille to play in your living room, what's involved?

"We have the living room space area with the two big bay windows, and we literally get all of the couches out into one other room. Usually there's a flatmate who doesn't work for Tenement TV, and he's usually at work, so we pile his room up with couches, tables, and TVs. We get the sound engineer up an hour or two beforehand with all their equipment. We just do it dry every time, set it all up. The band usually bring their own back line and we mic everything up. Then we just go for it!

"It usually takes a couple of hours during the day, we keep the neighbours happy that way. We did a Christmas party with six bands playing all day and invited the public; it ended up being a bit out of hand! Maybe that was a bit too much for the flat."

And now, the Tenement Trail replaces the barely legal flat gigs...

"One day, ten venues, 50+ bands, a lot of bands from Glasgow, a lot of touring bands, a lot of Scottish bands and people who know each other from the music scene as well, so it's a good day out for them and everyone else. You get lots of bands that can play to packed out crowds usually in smaller venues. It's a great atmosphere."

"I'm really excited that we've moved up to ABC 1 now. We've got Milburn playing! Then at the Art School, Broadcast, and King Tut's there's bands like Crash Club, Pronto Mama, Be Charlotte, Tijuana Bibles. Lots of cool new bands as well – I like the brand new bands like St. Martins. There's a new guy, Shogun, who's more grime; he's taken off a bit but he's still brand new. Bands like A New International are folky, there's electro bands like Shvllows who I'm really excited to see. It's quite a diverse mix of genres, and we strive to have a diverse line up too. We have ten female fronted bands, like the Van T's, and Five Cousins. It's great to have a solid female showing this year."