Pet Shop Boys, KT Tun­stall, Rus­sell Wat­son and Pas­sen­ger have pledged to play gigs for ‘Pass­port: Back to Our Roots’, the cam­paign to raise mon­ey for grass­roots music venues at risk of closure.

UPDATE: Jamie xx and Metron­o­my have been added to the line-up,  announced on BBC Radio 6 Music dur­ing the station’s ‘State Of Inde­pen­dence Day’. Metron­o­my will be appear­ing at Pat­terns in Brighton and Jamie xx at Cor­si­ca Stu­dios, London.

Pet Shop Boys will be per­form­ing at Camden’s Elec­tric Ball­room, Rus­sell Wat­son at Manchester’s Stoller Hall, Pas­sen­ger at Brighton’s Kome­dia and KT Tun­stall will be play­ing at two venues – Wind­mill Brix­ton and PJ Mol­loys in Dun­fermline. The artists will be play­ing these cel­e­bra­to­ry inti­mate shows, on dates to be con­firmed, when venues are able to open with no social distancing.

Entry to the shows will be via a prize draw which will run for three weeks from Mon­day Sep­tem­ber 14^th until Mon­day Octo­ber 5^th via crowdfunder.co.uk/passport-back-to-our-roots. For a £5 min­i­mum dona­tion to the cam­paign, you will be entered into the draw to win pass­es to the show of your choice for them­selves and a guest.

This announce­ment fol­lows the news that £75,000 was raised from the first prize draw for entry to con­certs by Elbow, Pub­lic Ser­vice Broad­cast­ing, Every­thing Every­thing, The Slow Read­ers Club and Ash. 

Sal­ly Cook, co-founder of Pass­port: Back to Our Roots said “We’re blown away by the incred­i­ble response to the first block of fundrais­ers, and want to extend our heart­felt thanks to every­one who donat­ed, and to every artist who pledged to play a grass­roots venue show. The out­pour­ing of sup­port (we read all the com­ments!) just proves how impor­tant grass­roots venues are to the UK’s music fans. £75k is an amaz­ing start and will help make a real dif­fer­ence to the venues involved and the sec­tor as a whole, but we’re not stop­ping there. We are real­ly excit­ed to be announc­ing this new group of artists this week.” 

Speak­ing about the cam­paign KT Tun­stall said “With­out grass­roots music venues, there are no big acts. It’s as sim­ple as that. The incred­i­ble eco-sys­tem of small venues exists, in the vast major­i­ty of cas­es, as labours of love. Con­stant­ly up against rapid­ly ris­ing busi­ness rates and big devel­op­er inter­ests, these essen­tial com­mu­ni­ty hubs are kept alive by often over­worked own­ers and staff with an unend­ing pas­sion for music and the music lovers and musi­cians they serve.”

Fur­ther groups of artists will be announced every month.

www.passportbacktoourroots.org

Main pho­to: The Trades inde­pen­dent music venue in Heb­den Bridge, West York­shire: The Slow Read­ers Club will be play­ing a gig here as part of the Pass­port campaign