Independent Venue Week is returning from 26th January to 1st February to celebrate indie music venues around the UK with hundreds of shows, including an exciting line-up in London.
The aim of IVW is to encourage music fans to turn off the TV, buy a ticket, enjoy a show - and support their local music community.
London has 32 venues involved, including Ronnie Scott’s, Third Man Records, The Social, The Royal Albert Hall's Elgar Room, Sebright Arms, Dublin Castle, The Windmill, The George Tavern and The Social, with bands such as
One of the acts involved are Nova Twins, who will be performing at the Amersham Arms in New Cross on January 27th. It marks a return to their roots for the band - Amy Love and Georgia South – who are living testament to the value of independent venues as incubators for talent.
“We're super excited to be celebrating independent venues, that scene,” says South, “Amersham Arms is a close venue to our hearts, it’s our local venue and we put on our first shows there, our first bands played there. It's nice to be coming back, 10 or more years on.”
“We used to put on these underage shows in our separate projects,” adds Love, of the time pre-Nova Twins, “We would play all these shows for the kids that we used to go to school with, because there was nowhere else for them to go. The Amersham did underage nights, which was really great for people to start making bands.”
Love recalls them selling cupcakes in the venue to make some extra cash while South remembers having her first legal drink in the pub. But the key point about the Amersham and independent venues in general is they are not merely places to drop in and out to watch shows, as with bigger venues, but actual community hubs which bring together like-minded people.
“It was our community where we didn't really have one,” says South, adding, “But when you go to a venue where, yes, you invite your friends, but it's also the public, it becomes real. It's tangible, and suddenly it's like, we're doing this now.”
Nova Twins have springboarded on to become one of the most exciting rock acts in the country. They sold out the O2 Forum Kentish Town last year, are due to support Evanescence on US and European arena dates off the back of an acclaimed appearance on NPR's Tiny Desk Concert. Recent album Parasites & Butterflies is a rollicking punk-infused extravaganza that feels like a band breaking through to new heights, and they recently received a Mobo nomination.
But they aren’t forgetting their roots: “We always say we'd be nowhere without independent venues,” says Love, “That's really where we cut our teeth, touring all of the UK independent scene. That's literally how you get good, you can make mistakes, the locals are a lot more forgiving than when you go out into bigger scale shows, so it's just a really great place to learn.
This is why it’s great that Independent Venue Week is putting on artists to draw people back to their local venues. A lot of people now are seeing the bigger artists but they're actually missing out on the array of amazing people playing just round the corner from them.”
As for what fans can expect from the Nova Twins back at the Amersham, Love says it’s simple:
“Chaos.”
For the full list of venues and artists participating visit: https://independentvenueweek.com/
