The Independent’s latest Main Stage venue is PJ Molloys, a 300-capacity venue in Dunfermline, Scotland, which has asserted itself over the past seven years as one of the region’s go-to live music spots.
Director Calum Miller owns the venue, having previously worked in promotion at PJs before being offered an opportunity to take over.
“I didn’t realise that was going to be my career path at all,” he told The Independent. “I thought, I’ll maybe do this for two or three years, and then I’ll have to go and get a real job. And here we are, 13 and a half years later, and I’m still going.”
PJs was “effectively an Irish theme bar”, when he took over, he said: “It was known for live music, but it was more cover bands as opposed to grassroots or original music.
“It’s a very unique space,” he added. “All these bands end up commenting on it when they first walk in, because it really does feel and look like a pub. But then they realise the infrastructure and the sound system we have in place – it’s everything a touring band needs.”
Miller’s own approach to booking bands is eclectic, with acts including Franz Ferdinand, Lewis Capaldi and Big Country all gracing the PJs stage.
“We’re just here to promote music in any way we can, so it could be a band just out of school playing their first gig, or a heavy metal group,” he said. “It does feel like it’s become a bit of a rite of passage for new acts – we’ve worked very hard over the last 10 years to get where we are.”
He said that one of the biggest challenges was often simply getting bands to come and play outside of the main touring circuit, as bands’ tours become shorter and less likely to take place outside cities such as London, Manchester, Cardiff, Dublin, Edinburgh, Glasgow and Liverpool.
“Trying to stay ahead is definitely one of the hurdles,” Miller explained. “Another is that, because we don’t own the building, we have to pay rent every month which is a sizeable chunk of our turnover. Utilities are going up, wages, all the licence fees…” Despite this, PJs has kept ticket prices around the same as what they were a decade ago.
The venue only survives because it also functions as a bar and nightclub, Miller said, which included a recent “Pink Pony Club” night in honour of pop star Chappell Roan. He also hailed the organisations Music Venue Trust and Creative Scotland for their championing of grassroots venues: “I don’t think we would have survived Covid lockdowns if not for them.”
Honourable mentions for Scotland’s grassroots venues go to: MacArts, Galashiels; The Vault Arts Centre, Newton Stewart; Krakatoa, Aberdeen; Sub Club, Glasgow.
Launched in association with the Music Venue Trust, the charity organisation founded in 2014 to help protect and support Britain’s independent music venues, The Independent’s Main Stage project comes after warnings that the sector is in the middle of a “full-blown crisis”.
Grassroots music venues (GMVs) frequently serve as a launch pad for up-and-coming talent, with virtually all of the UK’s biggest acts starting out on some of its smallest stages. Artists including Ed Sheeran, Lewis Capaldi, Wolf Alice, Coldplay, Arlo Parks and Stormzy all started out performing in grassroots venues.
Despite this, a damning report by the MVT published in January showed that an average of two grassroots music venues closed permanently every week in 2023, marking what industry figures branded the “most challenging” year in a decade.
The report also found that, despite contributing over £500m to the economy and employing close to 30,000 people, the grassroots scene remained “significantly underfunded compared to other areas of culture”.
In its year-long initiative, The Independent will highlight one grassroots venue from each of the 12 UK regions, and speak with the people who help to run it to highlight the struggles and successes they have experienced.
