Spotlight On... The Glad Cafe: 10 Years of Glad

The Glad Cafe is a vital not-for-profit community hub and live music venue in Glasgow’s Southside. The venue programmes all sorts of weird, wonderful, experimental and alternative local and touring artists all-year-round and operates in tandem with sister organisations Glad Rags Thrift, a second-hand charity shop, and The Glad Foundation, who “create opportunities for people of all ages and abilities to engage meaningfully and creatively with music and each other, regardless of their experience or background.” Needless to say, but all the different arms of The Glads are doing very good work!

Having opened in mid-August 2012, and after a brief closure for repairs, The Glad Cafe is back and this weekend they celebrate their tenth birthday in true Glad fashion, with a series of wonderful 10 Years of Glad gigs welcoming back a whole host of familiar faces to the venue for a joyous weekend of togetherness. Ahead of the celebrations, we catch up with venue manager and programmer Kim Blyth to take a trip down memory lane and shine a spotlight on The Glad Cafe.

You’ve been closed the past few weeks working on renovations ahead of your tenth birthday celebrations. Returning to the venue this week, what can people expect? Have there been any major changes?
Most folks in the area will be well aware that there have been ongoing issues with our roof over the years and significant water damage to the building. It’s caused a lot of problems for ourselves and our neighbours, so we’re extremely relieved and excited to be reopening this weekend with the scaffolding down (that has been up for over a year) and with the bulk of the work completed. We took this opportunity to close so that we could repair some of the internal damage, in addition to reconfiguring the kitchen area out front – which will perhaps be the most noticeable change internally, as it will all be enclosed. It’ll make a big difference to how food service can operate and will allow us to expand our food offering to customers, which is great!

Before we get into the forthcoming birthday celebrations, what have been some of your highlights at the venue in the ten years it's been open?
For me, there have been loads of stand-out gigs! It would be impossible to mention them all but I think Tara Jane O’Neil was a really special show – there was a lovely moment when Duglas T. Stewart joined her for Rainbow Connection. Ogoya Nengo & The Dodo Women was another great night! We’ve had some amazing past birthdays, too, including The Pastels, Ela Orleans, King Ayisoba, Babe, Bossy Love… There has been some incredible artists playing even just this past year; Lucrecia Dalt, caroline, CURL, Mabe Fratti, claire rousay and so on.

We have a really lovely team of folk here, past and present, and they are the ones that have made the past ten years so incredible. It’s been a joy to see so many meaningful relationships form, not just within our team of staff, but the extended community; the customers, the artists, the promoters. 

Image: Jamie Scott performing as MC Almond Milk courtesy of The Glad Cafe

This week sees you celebrate your tenth birthday in style, with a whole host of events. It’s particularly nice to see Save As Collective back for a night considering they were involved in one of the venue’s first events ten years ago. Tell us about everything you’ve got planned for the tenth birthday?
Absolutely! On Friday, we have a powerhouse duo in Marisa Anderson and William Tyler – two incredible guitarists from the US. Marisa has actually played here a couple of times before, but we’re really happy that she has William Tyler joining her this time, as well. They’ll play music from their duo record Lost Futures and will each do a few solo numbers as well. 

Saturday’s gig will be a bit of a throwback with the good folk of Save As Collective. Jonnie Common, Jamie Scott and Gav Thomson (from RAZA) have been involved with Glad since the early days, putting on semi-regular nights in the venue focused on electronic music, under the Save As banner. They’ve been on hiatus for some time, so I’m really pleased that they’ve agreed to come back for one night only and celebrate our tenth birthday with us. 

We’re slowing things down a bit on Sunday with American singer-songwriter and multi-instrumentalist Josephine Foster and English songwriter Dan Haywood. Both Josephine and Dan have played at the Glad on separate occasions, but it’s really nice to have them on the same bill together. It’ll be dreamy!

Community lies at the very heart of everything you do – what would you say to someone wanting to get involved in The Glad Cafe?
I think the Glad has something to offer everyone. We’re a place to meet and chat, have a coffee, have a beer, have some food, listen to music, play some music, make new friends, go on a date. I’d say to anyone wanting to get involved, just come and say hi! A lot of opportunities have come up over the years from just forming these connections and we’re always open to hearing from people; whether you are someone who wants to run a gig in the venue or are looking for work opportunities or perhaps have an idea for a workshop for The Glad Foundation.

And beyond this week’s birthday celebrations, what does the future hold for The Glad Cafe? What exciting events (or otherwise) do you have planned for the rest of this year?
It’s a really exciting time for The Glad Cafe right now. We’ve been making little changes here and there, meanwhile aiming to keep in place the values that were established in the very beginning for Glad. We’ve recently teamed up with the good folks at Pop Mutations and we’re gradually collaborating on more shows with them – there’s some really nice shows coming up for Autumn/Winter including Pan American and Kinbrae, Will Samson, Caleb Nichols and Mt. Misery, bar italia and more to be announced.

We’ve also been involved with Music Venue Properties 'Own Our Venues' campaign. They have launched a Community Benefit Society that allows music fans and ethical investors to buy community shares, in order to purchase the freeholds for nine pilot venues (of which The Glad Cafe is one) across the UK and rent them back to their operators at a fair rate and secure their futures. There is still a lot of work to be done, but it's a very exciting opportunity and we hope to see more and more venues get involved over the coming years.

Our sister charity, The Glad Foundation, continues to run a range of music lessons and workshops for people in the Southside of Glasgow, supported in large part by our second-hand and vintage shop Glad Rags Thrift. During lockdown we worked together on an online project drawing on the cafe as a space for performances and the Foundation's focus on education. This has inspired some exciting plans for more collaborative projects bridging our programmes, so watch this space!

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Help The Glad Cafe celebrate their tenth birthday by heading along to one or all of their 10 Years of Glad birthday shows this weekend featuring Marisa Anderson and William Tyler (19 Aug), Save As Collective: Jonnie Common, Jamie Scott and Raza (20 Aug) and Josephine Foster and Dan Hayward (21 Aug)

thegladcafe.co.uk