Bringing back the Barfly: Frank Turner and the Camden venue’s new owners on the importance of London’s grassroots music scene

They’re trying to send Camden’s live music scene to rehab, and we say “go, go, go”.

The launchpad for artists including Amy Winehouse, Coldplay and dozens of others, the Camden Barfly celebrated its grand re-opening last night, giving London’s grassroots music scene another vital performance space.

The venue at 49 Chalk Farm Road has had many names over the years, from The Camden Assembly to The Monarch, but its noughties-era incarnation as the Barfly was its most loved, with the 200-capacity space attracting the then-stars-of-tomorrow, including Adele, The Strokes, Ed Sheeran and many more to its stage.

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And now it's back — and at a crucial moment for London’s grassroots scene, as more and more small performance spaces disappear. Yes, there’s still space for the superstars at London’s arenas and stadiums — but where do the first-gig teenagers get their opportunities to perform in front of a crowd?

That’s where the Barfly comes in.

“It's not that the music industry as a whole is in a bad place, it's just in a bit of a state of flux at a certain level,” says Barfly co-owner Richard Buck.

“It's just about revalidating the ecosystem and how you do that, so I think we should all be hugely optimistic about where music in creative arts is. It's just about how we engage it and make it commercially viable for those that are really at the developing level.”

“I think there's a lot more awareness about the challenges of grassroots venues and venues of this capacity, because fundamentally they don't stack up financially,” adds Dan Ickowitz-Seidler, fellow co-owner at the Barfly, and Buck’s partner in the Propaganda Independent Venues (PIV) group, of which Barfly is now a part.

“We're providing something really important for the music industry, providing the first opportunities for artists to play and really engage with a fan base and build a fan base.

“Over the years we've had Adele, Amy Winehouse, Frank Turner played his first sold-out show here, The Strokes, Libertines, Killers, The National — so many incredible artists have played on this stage, but as a venue it's really hard to stack up when you've only got so much capacity.”

Making Camden rock again

The team behind Barfly’s re-opening is well-positioned to help it succeed. Buck and Ickowitz-Seidler’s PIV has already successfully taken ownership of Tramshed and The Globe in Cardiff, as well as the XOYO clubs in London and Birmingham, clawing back their independence from Australian live entertainment giant TEG. Fellow co-owner Chris McCormack (formerly the guitarist in alt-rockers 3 Colours Red), founded the Camden Rocks festival, which united Camden’s many live music spaces under one banner. And each has a personal connection to the venue, whether having gigged there, DJ’d there, or promoted nights at the Barfly.

Support for grassroots venues is picking up speed as awareness grows too, with charities like the Music Venue Trust helping struggling sites keep their doors open, and bigger shows and performers pushing funds towards the cause.

“We've got the £1 Pound Ticket Levy that's going on to more and more shows [an additional £1 fee artists and venues can optionally add to their ticket prices to help fund the restoration of grassroots venues, .ed]. Royal Albert Hall, and a lot of other large venues are starting to do it more and more, and I think people realise that they need to be supporting venues of this size to allow them to continue to exist,” says Ickowitz-Seidler.

“So we’re optimistic, hopefully, of the future support that's going to be here for venues of this size. Nervous about the challenges of the industry as a whole, but I think we're confident we can at least get to break even and hopefully make it work.”

And there are plans for more to come — McCormack is looking to revive the multi-venue Camden Rocks festival, with the Barfly at its heart. Stretching a mile through Camden’s music heartland, it saw punters dip in and out of more than twenty venues on a single ticket to see hundreds of acts across a weekend.

“Camden's still Camden,” says McCormack. “There's not many places you can pull off a festival like Camden Rocks. You can do it in Brighton, but you've got to get taxis everywhere.

“But Camden is very concentrated, you've got your great venues like The Underworld, The Black Heart, the big ones like Electric Ballroom and The Roundhouse. You’ve got all different-sized venues, it's great — when you're walking down the street any day of the week, you hear bands playing.

“It's important that the venues group together. We're not against each other, we're all part of the same thing, and that's what creates the scene in Camden.”

Barfly’s biggest fan takes to its stage

The new era of the Barfly was kicked off by not one, but two sold-out shows in a single night from punk singer-songwriter Frank Turner. The long-time North Londoner played his first ever shows at the Barfly in its original incarnation — both as part of his band Million Dead, and then later as a solo artist. Revealing his very own (unofficial) blue plaque at the venue, it’s a space that’s close to the musician’s heart.

“I feel that I have a debt of gratitude to repay, because my career would not exist without rooms like this,” says Turner.

“I would not have the career I have, the living I have, the art that I have, all that kind of thing, if I hadn't had the opportunity to find myself, find my audience, figure out who I am, figure out what I want to say, in rooms like the Barfly.”

Turner’s route to stardom has been a steady ascension, with 3,166 shows under his belt following the Barfly double-header. Venues like the Barfly have allowed him the space and time to build a loyal following — something not always afforded the artists of today where social virality is sometimes seen as the key currency.

“That sort of viral TikTok success type thing is just so flimsy,” he says.

“Everybody's heard horror stories about getting a billion streams on TikTok, booking a big venue, and then selling 12 tickets. It's important to view that kind of virality as almost a totally different thing to actually building an audience — they're two separate phenomena. We don't have to be judgmental about one or the other in saying that, but having a million kids who know 30 seconds of one of your songs is not the same as building an audience for your career.”

There’s an education to be had for a generation of young gig-goers lost to “COVID-weirdness” too, says Turner, youngsters that were deprived of the joys of those formative nights out at sweaty clubs and gigs, with an industry instead keen to push them towards shows at enormodome venues for stars charging several hundred pounds per ticket.

“Yeah, you can spend 400 quid and see Olivia Rodrigo, which is fine, and she's great. But you could also spend just 15 quid and go and see a bunch of bands you’ve never heard of and maybe discover something amazing. Also, more to the point, you make connections with people in the room, and then you'll meet the band afterwards, and they'll sweat on you during the gig, and you feel part of something in a way that you just don't in a corporate arena setting.

“There's something so direct about the connection in the room like this. The audience is there, you can touch them — you can touch about half of them if you lean! There's this sort of feedback loop, because a good show is a dialogue, not a monologue, it's about an exchange of energy, and that is so very apparent in a room like this.”

Want to know what’s on next at the Barfly? Check out all the upcoming shows here.

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