The Tyne Bar in Newcastle is regarded as one of the city’s top music venues. A freehouse pub owned by Fred Plater, himself a former musician who has been in the pub trade for 40 years, it offers a weekly Sunday afternoon music session all year round.
“We have what is our Sunday Blues Club, where we have a solid core of quite elderly regulars, the bands range in age, from 20s to 70s or older, but the common thread is that it’s blues, or R&B and sometimes heritage rock, music from bands like Led Zeppelin and Deep Purple,” says Fred.
Fred doesn’t sell tickets or charge entry and he works on the principle that if they pay £400 for a band, they need to take £800 to get a profit margin. “On average we pay £350 for a band and our bands tend to be well-known in this region, but we also bring in bands from Scotland and Yorkshire.
“We often catch bands who have been on a national tour and are on their way home and who are quite happy to stop off and do a Sunday afternoon for a rate they normally wouldn’t perform for.”
Fred suggests that to make music work for your venue, you should specialise in a style of music.
“You can’t have industrial grunge one week, punk the next and reggae the next. You need to set your stall on a narrow parameter to appeal to the same sort of people,” he says.
Marketing and promoting the bands is all important. “We are really good at online marketing and we use Facebook, Instagram and X. Facebook is good for the older crowd. We have 30,000 followers on Facebook – all our digital marketing and comms is handled by my son, who’s an ex-journalist and works in comms.”
Fred recalls a story told to him by a band, where they’d turned up to perform at a pub to find no-one was there – it’s not down to the band to promote your pub, you need to dig deep and advertise what’s coming up.
“Sundays tend to be dead in Newcastle unless you’ve got a Sunday roast. We don’t, we only have our regular menu – we’re a pub that serves food, not a food pub. We have a good reputation as a cool bar with live music. We also have cutting edge music somethings too. KT Tunstall has performed here.”
Bands play from 4pm and perform a minimum of two 40-minute spots, but usually they perform for longer.
In the summer, there is also music on Saturday, with the pub holding mini festivals on its outside stage. “On July 13, we’re going to celebrate our 30th anniversary and have invited bands who have a connection to the bar to play – bands with people who have worked in the bar or drunk in the bar.”
The Tyne Bar is also popular with students, with its Free Food Tuesday going down a treat. If you spend £7 at the bar, you get a free meal, which could be a chilli and rice one week and curry the next, plus a veggie option. “We always have two beers on at £3.70 a pint, Sam Smith’s Taddy and Blonde Star, a locally brewed ale, so people can buy two pints and have a free meal. Students will buy four pints and get two free meals – there are no restrictions. Last Tuesday we served 239 meals. It works well.”
Three takeaways
- Use music to fill quieter times of the week – but don’t expect instant success and be prepared to work hard to earn a reputation. It’s worth remembering that fans follow bands and they bring family and friends, who may return to your bar another day.
- Focus on a styles of music that will appeal to a similar groups of people.
- If Fred pays £400 for a band, he needs to make £800 back.
