Report by Isabel Thomas
Everyday Music Scenes: Pubs, Clubs and ’Stutes was an RMA Study Day held over a day and a half on the 14th and 15th April 2025. It was hosted at the International Centre for Music Studies at Newcastle University, with additional locations in Newcastle city centre. The aim was to stimulate interest in studying the history and present situation of music in small, local venues that would not fit the standard criteria of ‘grassroots music venue’, with an emphasis on overlooked but widespread forms of working-class musical culture.
The event was also intended to demonstrate a rising interest in historical, sociological, policy and industry research of music in working men’s clubs and institutes. Suitably, the timing coincided with the recent completion of a number of PhD theses which considered music in social clubs and pubs: Yorgos Paschos’ work on heritage values of grassroots music venues includes case studies on two ex-social clubs in York, Laurence Saywood’s thesis on Victorian and Edwardian culture in 1960s Britain analyses the musical traditions and innovations of working men’s clubs, and Nyle Bevan-Clark’s investigation of deindustrialised communities in the South Wales Valleys examines the connections between social change and music in clubs and pubs. For this occasion, Bevan-Clarke demonstrated his findings through the framing of covers versus originals, and Saywood presented new material on televised representations of pubs and clubs.
The first day began with papers on singing and participation in public houses, alehouses and other similar spaces inherited from the early modern period, followed by a panel on history and heritage of working-class leisure spaces. Esbjörn Wettermark’s paper, the first of the day, on access and inclusion in folk singing, paired well with the optional evening visit to the Bridge Folk Club, which calls itself ‘the oldest club running in its original venue’ – i.e. a Victorian pub room at the top of a steep flight of stairs. Using participatory research as part of the Access Folk project, Wettermark noted that heritage buildings pose a challenge for reasonable adjustments, and predicted that more light might be shed onto disability and access needs in pubs as part of the UK’s recent commitment to the UNESCO Convention on the Intangible Cultural Heritage.
This was followed by two papers on early modern singing. Katherine Butler provided evidence that catch-singing was a feature of alehouse drinking culture in which manual labourers were able to sing in polyphony, and Abi Kingsnorth described the process of creating digital audiovisual soundscapes of ballad singing for research and public engagement purposes. Following a break, my paper on the presence of commercial musicians in early London radical clubs brought us into the nineteenth century, after which Laurence Saywood analysed the representation of nineteenth century genres on popularist television shows as a 1960s expression of ambivalence towards modernity. The day finished with the screening of my short documentary film (replacing a paper cancelled due to illness) on continuities between industrial-era cultural practices and contemporary cover band scenes in pubs and clubs of the South Wales Valleys; a location that would be returned to on the second day.
The panels on the second day were themed around musical expressions of identity – at the ‘hyperlocal’, regional and national levels – and methods for researching venues. In the former, the theme of participation from the day before returned as a relevant motif. Núria Bonet explored jukeboxes as a participatory means of consuming music and negotiating taste, and Nyle Bevan-Clark showed how familiarity in live music contributes to a sense of community. Martin V. Clarke revealed nostalgia and participation to be two key contributors to the notion of Wales as the Land of Song, which he illustrated through Max Boyce’s 1974 album recorded live at Treorchy Rugby Club.
The final panel showed two very different ways of researching small, local, unusual and/or often overlooked music venues. Rachel Cowgill began by sharing the approaches towards community archiving of music venues developed in three projects, including a DIY toolkit and a digital archive focused on memories. Giving the last paper of the event, Richard Anderson and Grace Goodwin gave a fascinating view into the inclusion of pubs, bars, hotels and social clubs in their comprehensive mapping of live music venues in the Liverpool City Region. They described how advocacy for dedicated music venues and grassroots music venues has been gaining traction, but other venues that contribute significantly to the live music ecosystem can be overlooked. The significance of what they called ‘community venues’, making up 68% of the region’s live music venues, is understated, they argued. By collecting and presenting meaningful and useful information – including stories, memories, historical sources, management models and economic data – these two projects show contrasting methods of contributing to the visibility of a wider variety of live music venues.
After lunch, the conference moved to Newcastle Labour Club for a keynote by Pete Brown, author of Shakespeare’s Local, Man Walks Into A Pub: A Sociable History of Beer and Clubland: How the Working Men’s Club Shaped Britain. Brown, himself a member (and previously committee member) of the Mildmay Club in London, presented some of his upcoming book on the intersection of physical taste and auditory perception, playing a selection of songs paired with different drink tasters. As a professional public speaker at festivals and corporate events, he responded with a sense of humour to the comparatively DIY attempt at hosting his presentation in a club building that was preparing for closure; after half a century, we were the building’s last ever booking.
In addition to the talk, Brown shared his reflections on the venue, based on a chapter of Clubland in which he spent time at the labour club with the owner of the local Wylam brewery, observing the karaoke attended by the mostly elderly membership. He shared his view of karaoke as the successor of the early music customs of working men’s clubs and institutes such as music hall – such provocative interpretations certainly challenge academics and give us something bold to work with!
The second day ended with a short plenary led by co-organiser Bonet that highlighted some connections made between the research presented and discussed, shone a light on areas worthy of closer attention, and brainstormed potential next steps. In response to the question ‘Who and what was missing?’, delegates pointed to subjects as diverse as nostalgia, ‘non-PC’ songs, queer folk music, links between the early modern and the twentieth century, race, black music communities, hegemonic gender expectations such as singers’ outfits, overlap with church/chapel music, drink and drug culture, the privilege of ‘regulars’ and ‘members’, preconceptions about communities (e.g. that they are racist/sexist), LGBT+ spaces, bar staff, and soundscapes. Furthermore, those researching contexts from outside of Britain – including attendees and paper submissions – were unfortunately not able to make it. It may be valuable to expand the geographical scope in a future follow-up event with transnational perspectives and case studies from other countries.
A significant theme for further study is the role of creativity in the venues discussed. The musicians in the majority of the ‘community venues’ identified by the Liverpool Live Music Mapping Project play covers rather than original music. Previous research elsewhere has connected cover bands with a lack of musical creativity and claimed that audiences are less willing to pay to see emerging artists because the familiarity of cover bands is more appealing. Anderson and Goodwin, however, pointed out that the money made from cover gigs often supports musicians to be able to play less lucrative original gigs. Nevertheless, there may be far more to it than this. Playing covers often presents musicians with the opportunity to develop their confidence and craft on- and off-stage, providing an earlier step in the grassroots-venue-to-festival pipeline that informs the mission of Music Venue Trust. Going further, perhaps there is something that policy and industry research can gain from both ethnographic and historical studies on this topic. Bevan-Clark, for example, showed how the privileging of familiarity in cover band and cabaret-style performances can provide a shared experience of continuity amidst social change. The more historical papers, on the other hand, hinted at a long precedent for venues such as pubs and clubs to foreground familiar music, in the form of music hall, variety and cabaret, with ‘covers’ of a sort serving various social, cultural and economic functions.
Other connections were made over the two days between the historical interactions of clubs, music scenes and religious traditions. Most notably, Martin V. Clarke’s paper showed how Welsh nonconformism contributed to a musical culture of democratic engagement that permeated other spaces such as sports and social clubs. In the Q&A for the paper on London radical clubs, Clarke asked whether there were connections with nonconformism; however, these particular clubs tended to emerge from the nineteenth century secularist movement, and, as Brown pointed out, the Mildmay Radical Club was in fact described by the nearby Methodist church as having a ‘pernicious influence’. The unionisation of clubs, however, was led by a Unitarian reverend, and clubs were often funded and supported by nonconformists. This revealed a potential future vein of study in the influence of church music versus secularism on the early working men’s club and institute movement and club cultures since.
The next stage may be to bring together some of these papers into an edited collection that shows how the interaction of the authors’ findings might be mutually illuminating. Other ideas discussed included a larger conference, a network for scholars working on working-class music cultures, and the possibility of reconnecting to submit themed panel proposals to other conferences. The event closed with enthusiasm for following up on these possibilities, and a thanks to the organising team, chairs, presenters, student assistant Gabriel Bath, delegates who sang at the folk club – including MA student Jack Theaker who used the experience as fieldwork for an ethnomusicology essay – and all who contributed with their presence and discussions.