Brighten the Corners the next step in Ipswich's music scene

Growing up in the 80’s and 90’s I was exposed to lots of music by my parents such as Peter Green’s Fleetwood Mac, The Rolling Stones, The Beatles and Bob Dylan.

Things first clicked when I heard Jimi Hendrix and it inspired me to pick up the guitar.

I was lucky that my dad was a collector of all things musical and had a drum kit and guitars in the house to muck around on.

My next musical lightbulb moment was when guitar music exploded in the early to mid nineties with Nirvana, The Lemonheads, Pavement through to Blur, Elastica and Supergrass. I obsessed over music reading The NME and Melody Maker every week and forming some terrible bands with terrible names while at school.

While I was at university in Derby I drifted away from playing music for a few years but rekindled my passion when I moved to Suffolk in the mid 2000s.

In 2009 after being made redundant I used my small amount of savings, redundancy and long term parental loans to take over Sound Back Studios on South Street and create a new recording facility called Punch Studios.

It was this move that started me on the path that I’m on now.

As things progressed with Punch Studios we were expanding the studios to incorporate more rehearsal rooms however the opportunities for these bands to play locally started decreasing in the mid 2010’s.

The Ishmael Ensemble (Image: ORANGE SQUARE PRESS SHOT)

The Steamboat Tavern stopped their regular music nights, the Blue Room at McGinty’s and The Swan changed hands and the Rose and Crown where there was a vibrant emo and pop-punk scene was taken over and again, live music opportunities stopped.

We had Ed Barnes working hard promoting shows at The Rep showing how it could work as a live music venue putting on many successful nights, however he faced an uphill battle with the brewery who said there was no correlation between live music and wet beer sales, so that was a non-starter too.

So we were in a situation where we had 20 bands a week practising at the studios and nowhere to play.

The bands I played in could only play in the aforementioned pubs then had to look to other towns and cities to play further.

We got to a point in Ipswich where there was no dedicated music venue and no opportunities for artists playing original music in pubs.

All we had was the 1000 capacity Corn Exchange and putting on a gig there was totally unattainable.

In 2015 through our not for profit CIC called Out Loud Music, I wrote a grant application to the Biffa Award and approached local councillors to support a project to build a new community driven music venue.

We were successful with this bid and in September 2016 we opened The Smokehouse, Ipswich’s first dedicated venue for original live music driven by a DIY volunteer ethos to grow a community with like minded individuals and artists.

We went from hosting four gigs a month to 12 in some months and average around 114 gigs per year. It was tiny at 70 capacity, however it was the catalyst to what we wanted to do next.

In 2019 we were approached by Arts Council England and Sound City Liverpool to put on a multi-venue festival in Ipswich.

It was a great success in 2019 and 2021 however we wanted to become independent of the Sound City brand for our event in 2023.

Obviously we also had a pandemic to contend with which nearly floored us, however with Arts Council England help and by raising £13,000 through crowdfunding we managed to survive and keep our workforce employed.

However, we have come out much stronger and are now looking to add more venues to fill the void, or rungs on the ladder from The Smokehouse up to The Corn Exchange.

Inside the Baths which is one of the venues used for Brighten The Corners. Picture: Ruth Hackett (Image: Ruth Hackett)

We are about to re-open St Stephen’s Church as a live music venue with a 200 standing capacity after taking on a 20-year lease from Ipswich Borough Council.

We are also doing all we can to secure The Baths, the former St Matthew’s Bath Hall where Led Zeppelin played in 1971 as our third venue at 340 capacity.

If we are able to manage that, we have then built an infrastructure for artists to grow and thrive in this town and also offer national and international bands performance opportunities from 70 -1000 capacity venues with incremental steps in between.

As artists we put on grow in popularity we can now offer them more opportunities to come back to the town rather than to play once and never come back again.

We’re dedicated to bringing music, arts and culture to the town and to provide festival wristbands get you into four indoor festival stages across the town and we have a free entry outdoor stage on the Cornhill with an Adnamns beer truck onsite, so we’re hoping for a nice sunny weekend.

We’re bringing some of the best emerging and national bands to Ipswich as well as showcasing the best of regional talent.

Our ‘apply to play’ competition had over 200 applicants and we managed to whittle it down to 13 performing over the weekend, this shows that there is an abundance of music being made in our region which is comforting to know.

The 86TV's will perform at Brighten The Corners over Friday and Saturday. Picture: Lindsay Morgan (Image: Lindsay Morgan)

I’m really excited to have 86TVs and The Go! Team headlining and can’t wait to see artists such as Jords, Coops, Rozi Plain, Cowboyy and many more.

I hope to be able to float between the five venues and soak up the atmosphere.