BREN BERRY, music promoter
I SUPPOSE THE opening of Vicar Street coincided with the start of the Celtic Tiger, so we’ve been through that. My primary responsibility from the start was to establish Vicar Street, which has been a great success. Certainly, the live industry thrived hugely up to and including last year, until the wheels fell off.
A significant difference for me over the past 10 years is that, unless it’s a really hot show, people have returned to going out just at the weekend –Fridays and Saturdays. That’s quite the thing now, whereas in the good old days people were heading out several nights a week. Our present booking schedule reflects that, and I can see it in the sales trends of Vicar Street.
Outside Fridays and Saturdays, the risk element is greatly increased; audiences are well down. Our response to that is to try and box clever, and make sure we have our weekends filled. We’re less inclined to take risks we might have taken before, less inclined to pay big fees we might have before, and more inclined to push artists into reducing their ticket prices. Ultimately, that’s in their control – some would, some wouldn’t.
Another trend I’m noticing is that bands can’t come back to play here as regularly as they once used to, because people just tick an act off their list.
Another thing that has changed is that bands now tour to make money because sales of their albums are dropping considerably. It’s imperative for bands to do that because the record industry is showing no signs of surviving in any healthy way. Of course, this is good news for the live music industry, which is still in relatively rude health.
Business is very strong in certain areas, although it’s tougher for new bands to break through and tougher for small bands to sell tickets because people might be keeping their money for a bigger act.
How will it pan out for next year? Vicar Street is shaping up very nicely, as is Live at the Marquee in Cork, and our arena shows, some of which we’ll be announcing before Christmas.
We’ll always continue to work with local talent, and for me that’s the most important part of my job. We’ll keep our nose to the grindstone, though we’ve definitely adopted a more cautious approach. You have to be far cleverer about what you’re doing now than you were 10 years ago.
In conversation with Tony Clayton-Lea