Le Pub, in Newport, has been confirmed as the fifth UK venue to become a ‘Community Owned Venue’, with a little bit of help from the Music Venue Trust Property Scheme.
Sat at the end of Newport High Street, the venue has become highly regarded by musicians and music lovers alike, punching well above its weight in terms of the acts it is able to put on and the vibe it has created around the town.
More than just your average pub with a stage, the venue has a fully vegan menu, a practice/recording studio and exudes a progressive attitude towards everything it does. It has become the place to meet for people wanting something different to mainstream culture.
The atmosphere in the venue is not one that could be created by a venue operating purely for profit, it is run by people who love music, for people who love music. Indeed the venue is owned by people who love music.
Manager, Sam Dabb, started the le Pub Journey back in 1992, when she took on the venue, then situated in Caxton Place, a few streets from where it sits now. In 2017 the owner of the building in which Le Pub sat sold up and Sam had to move on. It turned out to be a blessing in disguise though, as the new venue is in a much better location and has a more suitable lay out. The old venue featured lots of stairs, even in the middle of the live music area, making it – well, let’s just say, interesting.
The move to the new venue coincided with a Community Interest business being set up, making the venue one of the first in the country to be owned by the community and local music lovers.
As of last Friday (10th January 2024) not only is the venue community owned, but so it the building in which the venue sits, thanks to support from the Music Venue Trust Properties initiative, meaning there will be no repeat of the building being sold out from under Le Pub’s feet.
The purchase of this property was also made possible with the support of the UK Government and the Community Ownership Fund. Music Venue Properties worked closely with the team at Le Pub to apply for funding in early 2024, and we were thrilled to secure £249,999 towards the venue’s purchase. MVT
This news comes just a few weeks after The Moon in Cardiff announced it has had to close: just the latest in a string of closures of grassroots venues in recent years.
According to the Music Venue Trust (MVT) annual report in January 2024, one hundred and twenty-five grassroots venues closed in 2023.
The music industry has always been a major contributor to the UK economy,
UK Music issued a report last year, one of the key findings of the new report is the statistic that the industry contributed a record £7.6bn in terms of Gross Value Added (GVA) to the UK economy in 2023.
According to the Association of Independent Festivals, an estimated 192 festivals have disappeared since 2019 while 60 festivals announced a postponement, cancellation or closure in 2024.
UK music industry contributed record £7.6bn to UK economy in 2023 | M Magazine
With festivals now more popular than ever and huge new enormodomes springing up on a regular basis, it is important to remember that most of the bands that are filling these huge venues started out playing grassroots venues. Oasis, The Stone Roses and even Green Day played in Newport’s TJs. Def Leppard, Motorhead and Marillion played in Newbridge Memorial Hall. Black Sabbath, Coldplay and Ocean Colour Scene played Blackwood Miner’s Institute. The Manic Street Preachers even played the Little Theatre in Blackwood.
Without grassroots venues, many of the artists that now headline festivals and stadiums would never have had a break or been able to perfect their sound.
The Vital Role of Grassroots Music Venues in Festival Headliners’ Journey
But never mind the big venues, some of us would never dream of being stuck at the back of a cavernous venue only able to see the band via a huge video screen. New Year’s Eve just gone marked twenty-five years since the Manic Street Preachers headlined an enormous gig in the Millennium Stadium. Comments on social media were dominated by people complaining how long it took to get served at the bar, with many queuing for several hours to get served, or just giving up and not drinking.
Grassroots venues offer an opportunity to be up close and personal with the band, to be able to get a drink in a sensible time, usually at a sensible price, and to catch bands that are making music for the sake of making music, rather than to pay for another sports car.
For the last eight years, Music Venue Trust has led the campaign to protect, secure and improve Grassroots Music Venues in the U.K. Supported by you – our incredible community of music fans, artists, and crew – the charity has grown from strength to strength and currently provides support for over 900 venues in the U.K.
You can be part of that project, investing in the future of grassroots music by taking out shares with the MVT
Own Our Venues – a Music crowdfunding project in United Kingdom by Music Venue Properties
Given the flourishing of Le Pub, along with other venues like the recently opened Corn Exchange (another community owned venue) and The Cab, it is surely no coincidence that the NME recently published an article bigging up the resurgence of the music scene in Newport
…to hear members of Newport’s music scene tell it, the city’s music scene is resurging with the opening of multiple new venues and a growing crop of young bands. “It’s the best I’ve seen it for years,” says Sam Dabb, owner of Newport venue Le Pub and former Welsh liaison to the Music Venue Trust. “It’s got to be 15 years since it felt this buzzing”.
“The best I’ve seen it for years”: Newport’s resurgent music scene
Newport was, of course, at the heart of the ‘Cwl Cymru’ explosion in the 1990s, with the likes of Dub War, 60 Foot Dolls and The Darling Buds, along with the amazing roster of bands that would lug their gear into the long gone TJs venue resulting in Newport being labeled by the music press as ‘The new Seattle’.
Often overshadowed by Cardiff, Newport has always had a more down to earth, and dare I say, working class vibe to it. The homegrown music scene didn’t start with Cwl Cymru and certainly didn’t end when the media started looking elsewhere, but there is no doubt it is riding on the crest of a wave at the moment. You don’t really know you’re in a ‘golden era’ until it is over, but being an old git, I think I’m seeing all the signs of a golden era here and now.
The announcement of the purchase of the building was celebrated the only way appropriate, with a gig in the venue. Along with the unveiling of a plaque outside the venue
Local boys and long time supporter of the venue, Joe Kelly and the Royal Pharmacy headlined. Support came from an incredibly appropriate band, all girl group Murder Club, made up of staff from Le Pub who got together through meeting in the venue and practice in the studio downstairs. They even have a song all about gossiping in the girls’ toilets of Le Pub. Well, I say girls’ toilets, Le Pub goes out of its way to make all of its facilities welcoming to all genders, no matter how they identify themselves.
Between bands there were several speeches from the stage.
Matthew Otridge, COO of Music Venue Properties
You might be forgiven to thinking that this actually started many years ago, when Le Pub itself became community owned as a business, it took on this building and developed it and brought this amazing venue into life. I believe one of the best venues in the UK.
And in doing that, not only did they create this marvellous place, but it kick-started a well, a wave of ideas that inspired other music venues up-and-down the country to do the same, including a one little venue in Bristol, thirty miles away, which I actually owned it the time, The Exchange, and they turned into a community own venue in 2018.
From there, a couple of years later, when I joined The Music Venue Trust I said to my boss, why don’t we use some of those community shares to buy venues?
So five-years later le Pub is becoming the fifth venue we have bought, so that it can be enjoyed for generations to come and from here, the only way is up quite literally and figuratively.
Mark Davyd, CEO Music venue Trust
You can all take your hands, everybody near you, take your hands and you can either reach down to the floor or you can reach to a war or if you’re tall enough, you can try and reach a ceiling. Just touch something in this building. Okay, you own this building now it’s yours, it belongs to this community.
We believe these buildings should belong to people like us that love them and we’ll support them and we’ll go there and we will honour and treasure them, and we will honour and respect the people who run them. Because in Sam, you have literally one of the best venues operators on the f****** planet.
Sam Dabb, Manager, Le Pub
I can’t even begin to list everyone I need to thank for giving all their time and energy to help run this tiny little venue in this weird, weird city. It’s a very weird city. The pub board, our shareholders, every member of staff, every band, every customer, and every musician.
He’s going to hate this, but the man that fixes everything and follows me round, trying to calm my chaos while simultaneously, making sure I achieve everything I want to Matthew Dabb. (Huge cheer goes up)
And this is a really, really weird one I really want to thank the woman who complained about the noise and nearly shut us down a decade ago, because without her and the crowd funder, we never would have found Music Venue Trust, and without them and Music Venue Properties, we probably wouldn’t be all in this room having a really nice time. So thanks to you, you moaning **** ****
But here is to ‘benefiting from adversity’ and constantly moving forward. Because that’s what we do, we turn things around, we adapt, we move
Please go and get a free beer at the bar get two free beers if there’s any money left, so maybe get them fast and then after that, can you please all spend money at the bar that I can pay music venue properties, rent and they can carry on and secure another venue that’s just as special as this to another group of people.
And that is the moral of the story. Adapt and survive.
It is now up to us to keep venues alive by going to gigs. Use them or lose them.