Interview: Elaine McGinty, CEO of the Phoenix Cultural Centre, Woking

A discussion on the challenges of getting an Americana music venue off the ground in a London commuter town.

Just recently I had the pleasure to visit the Phoenix Cultural Centre (PCC) in Woking, a multi-activity community organisation designed to promote the arts and grassroots music for the benefit of the local Woking population, where our favourite music struggles to gain traction despite that population being pretty sizeable.  The music venue, Fiery Bird, part of the PCC, contained within the confines of the old KFC Headquarters in the centre of the town, is the brainchild of musician and poet Elaine McGinty and her bass-playing partner Joe Buckley who have been fighting against the odds to get the music venue off the ground as a viable setting for profiling new young (and older) local artists and those with a little more of a reputation.

Elaine has a reputation in Surrey as one the country’s most inspirational and influential women, given her community initiatives in teaching and as a learning advisor helping communities identify learning and skills that they want in their area. The PCC that she leads as CEO employs volunteers with learning skills and other disadvantages designed to help them improve their skill sets. Americana UK’s Fred Arnold caught up with Elaine McGinty to get a first-hand view of what it means to establish and run a grassroots venue.

We are at the Phoenix Cultural Centre in Woking and I am with Elaine McGinty. It’s very nice to meet you, thank you for giving us this interview

Thank you for your interest, it’s always lovely to share our project.

Tell me, how did you come up with the name Fiery Bird, is that you?

No!  everyone says that – I wouldn’t name something after me!  It’s just like a slang word for Phoenix so if someone would call it the Black Swan pub, they might call it the Mucky Duck!

Yes, that’s right!  So give me a little background to the obstacles and struggles you had (and are having) getting Fiery Bird off the ground.

We started this project in 2011, to get the town, Woking, a grassroots and cultural centre, because despite having been famous for music and writing in Surrey we had no music and cultural venue, nothing the people might have felt represents the identity of everyone from Woking, regardless of where they came from. The town was being regenerated and was very generic, with recognizable names of shops and stuff. I was working for a charity at the time and helping get people back on their feet, and they were saying well, we feel left behind, there’s nothing for us, so we thought if we get a building and make it into a creative space and encourage new work, new writing, new art, and cultural stuff from every background, so Phoenix seemed to be a good name for that, our band was called Phoenix Chroi  so we took it from there and that’s where we came up with it all and then Fiery Bird became the music venue side.

Why Woking?

Well, because we were all from there, well Joe doesn’t but I’ve worked with people in other areas who are doing this around the country, and successfully, and because we came from here and there was a massive gap and I know the demographic – it just wasn’t happening here and it seemed quite shocking that we didn’t have one grass root music venue at all.

And then you had quite a lot of obstacles to get the Firey Bird up and running

Yes, definitely!  We were in a tight situation, first, we did it in the streets, and the pubs,  then we had a tiny shop space right opposite here from 2013- 2018, then in 2018 we took a lease on a 1,000 capacity night club, which we had for two years.  That was where we started a Blues Festival, and then we branched it out to Americana music. We were then due to getting a permanent space through the council, they went bankrupt, so they couldn’t fulfill their promise. So here we are in this massive office block, that used to be the KFC HQ because the owners stepped in and said we will give this to you for three years while you get it sorted, don’t close.  So the property developers gave us this and we’ve been able to set up a venue with lots of space in it.  You know, it’s a better size, it’s 250 cap, the last one was 1,000 cap which is a bit too big for us for a grassroots venue, so that’s where we came from.

But then there were funding issues, the council bankruptcy, then when we got into this building they wanted to charge us nearly £500,000 in business rates!  So we had to challenge that and had to get the business rates taken off the building because it’s not in use anymore, and we got that sorted out and we were excited and planning our Americana festival in May and then we got burgled!  Everything got stripped out, they flooded the place but luckily, again, the owners stepped in and they knew that we really wanted to be open for the Festival so they helped get the work done which was fantastic so hopefully, fingers crossed, those challenges are behind us now!  We can just focus on the music, I mean the thing is that we have had and still have all the challenges any grassroots venue has but it’s nice to be able to concentrate on those positive things, not things that try to stop you, because our funding bids were all at panels where the business rates issue hit so they all got decimated.

And on the question of how much they wanted to charge you, you queried that on the basis that you’re a non-profit organisation.

Also, in fairness to them, they were getting the figures that are registered on the central agency and this was a commercial building; we were making the point that this isn’t a commercial building anymore and half of it is unusable and the valuation agency agreed with us luckily and got it revalued just as a community venue and this is out of rates,. It was a bit worrying, you have to learn the law, about everything…

Yes the fact that you’re a musician and wanted to focus on the music

Yes exactly and all you’re thinking about is health and safety, business rate, insurances, electricity bills – I mean the electricity bills are still massive here!  So, we live hand to mouth, we have one employee, who is also a full-time volunteer on top of that, and everyone else is a volunteer so when we get the bands in and things get going and stuff like that it really works!

It’s lovely to have various ages of performers at open mic nights that we have regularly and the Americana Festival came out of those open mic nights. We showcased brand new really good Americana work!  We pricked our ears up and thought wow this is good, this is something coming through, really gaining momentum so we thought well what’s the best thing to do, once we’ve done a showcase for someone and referred them to some other places is to put a festival on ourselves!  Then match them with established artists and also work with the local promoters who specialize in that area because that’s really important to us,  that it’s not something we would go in with two feet, it’s working with people who have expertise in putting on those artists who hopefully give them …  because we have some brilliant ones like we did this one with Midnight Specials Blues Club, who do a monthly night in Camberley. We worked with them before so they have that expertise so it was worth talking with them and say well shall we work on this together.  One of them Dave is from Woking, he has been a well-known Woking musician for many years, so that was the other thing as well, so the ecosystem of new music is just getting stronger and stronger and any monetary benefits we can put back into supporting people with affordable workshops and work experience like the people we have here today.

I notice that the original focus was on blues but how did that change?

At the time that was because they were the artists coming through, then we were seeing more Americana-type music, much broader, you know how it is when you think oh, I really like them but they’re not blues, so what can I do, so we thought let’s just broaden it out a bit, then we were seeing it matched with a national scene, this would be about 2018, we were just seeing some really good artists coming through.  Then we get some good people who, because it is a cultural centre, we see people like Ajay Srivastav who plays blues, is of Indian heritage, brought up over here but loves his Indian heritage and loves blues, so he does this amazing sort of stuff with Indian influence and its really, really good so we get excited about people who come and play and this is just a different version of, you know when you really like a band and you play your friend a cd,  this is kind of what we’re doing, you know, look at this really amazing person and we get excited and we put them on local radio, we’re connected with local radio, get them interviews and if we have friends who are running festivals we say you must really hear this person, and I suppose it’s just another version of being excited about original music.

It’s enthusiasm that you have generated and you can pass onto places that will expand the profile. Like radio.

Yes, and also inspire other people who haven’t thought of, or want to try new music.  The whole point of this venue is people can come in at any level, they can come in on tour, we speak to agents of touring acts and hopefully, that will be open to us putting forward people coming through from showcases and stuff or they can be on the Festival or they can be on one of our showcase nights or band nights or they can just come to an open mic and

We started with showcases, the original music was people we had seen on the scene or gigged with or were referred to us and we had seen and we did those at different pubs around the area to try and stimulate an interest in new live music, that was in 2011, so we had a tiny part of that was open mic but we separated that out when we got the venue. We have three rooms of different size for the music.

So did Fiery Bird start with open mic or showcases and when was that, because you had problems with the venue …?

Well, Fiery Bird the Venue, we had a tiny shop over the road that we started in, called the Phoenix Centre and that little room you just saw is modelled on that and the Fiery Bird started when we moved to the ex-nightclub that the council gave us for a couple of years, that night club vibe didn’t really suit the Phoenix brand so we separated the two brands out, the Fiery Bird to be the live music venue arm that talks to agents and the Fiery Bird that just starts with us putting gigs on, showcases and open mic and we were noticing that there was more coming through in the Americana style that was just really good.

Hence the festival?

Yes, hence the festival, yes we just thought where do we go from here next with this, because you are always trying to give people a bigger platform so it felt like a natural progression really.

So, it’s interesting isn’t it, the Americana genre name is something a lot of people can’t get their heads around because they don’t know specifically what it is, how do you profile that ?

I don’t know if it’s a gut response really, I mean you’re listening to someone and its bringing up themes and styles, sometimes we would get people who would sing Irish music but there’s really enough of that style, with the background of Appalachian or Celtic folk. Americana is quite fluid, we’re not purists, we are no means experts on any genre which is why we try to work with local people who do specialise in it, because they know it; but anything that moves people.  Rebecca Jane is a lovely folk artist and she’s got Scottish heritage but her music is Americana with Scottish influence  We find a lot of people from Irish and Scottish heritage are more au fait with the country side of Americana and then maybe the more English/British side is more into the blues but it is more about listening to people and thinking how it fits into other gigs you’ve seen, other artists you’ve worked with.

You get the profile locally and you entice people to come and play at festivals locally, how do you anticipate expanding that into more of an international artist rota, I know you’ve had a couple of American artists.

Yes we have,  from our contacts from being gigging musicians ourselves.

So Duwayne Burnside (son of RL Burnside, blues musician) for example we know his tour manager Deborah, who is a musician who came over from Canada  played in our tiny shop, that’s the weirdest thing, sometimes when you’re trying to get a local venue off the ground, we’ve had trouble getting off the ground locally and then we’ve had contacted from NY saying  “I’m over can I play“.  We’ve got a band who are from LA next month, they’re not Americana, flying out of Heathrow and they heard about us and asked if they could play the venue the day before they fly out.  We’ve been contacted by bands from NY, Norway, Canada, and then you build up a relationship with people, its lovely as they’re wearing our t-shirts and sending us pictures.  That’s what’s happened, for example, with Duwayne Burnside, that’s come through just us as musicians meeting another musician and them coming and doing a showcase, they then become a tour manager and then they ….   You end up with this relationship.  Others like Laurence Jones is coming through the promoter AGMP. Also the Music Venues Trust have an initiative ongoing.  You put something out there and someone picks up on it or we pick up on it and you end up with a nice relationship with the promoter and the artist themselves and they come back or they recommend you because people …

Because they like the vibe

Yes they do, that’s one thing that lovely people do, after the last one Mark Harrison said to Nick from Midnight Special Blues Club ” I’m out gigging six days a week, I wish I could do all six there”, which was a nice thing to say.  It’s because everyone is passionate. It’s nice also to have someone over from Mississippi as well, we were very lucky with the Americana Festival because we got Arts Council Festival funding for it.

How did you get that?

I just did an application to the supporting Grassroots Music Fund, within that we built in some development money so got some gigs to go around it to help develop. We never do anything that is one thing, it has to have some repercussions, development, some community (our local as well as our music community) it’s got to have more impact so if we ever do a gig it’s not about they come in do the gig and they go, obviously we don’t stalk them but if anyone is any good and falls into our lap we want to share it with other artists, find them support slots, recommend them just because we think they’re great.

Do you think the name attracts a lot of people, it’s quite catchy?

I think the fun thing is that the Fiery Bird attracts more people than the PCC which is fine because the PCC runs it all, but yes the name does capture the imagination,.  It doesn’t seem to do me any harm either; if someone is playing up at the door , well they don’t play up if they think I’m the Fiery Bird  … you know how it is with live music venues, they are a bit calmer, we have a bar but no one’s getting rowdy and throwing alcohol down their necks like in a pub.

I’ve noticed that the audiences are quieter here than in the States, more respectful..

We do ask the audience with quiet artists to remember that we are a music venue, not a pub, and to respect the artists when they play; we do that on open mic too, in fact especially on open mic nights because those poor people aren’t used to managing a crowd.  We just feel it’s a space for the artists to express themselves and also people are paying to hear them.

You presumably price your entry charge according to the artist but you have to pay them too.

Yes we do, sometimes the artist chooses the ticket price, the agent tells us what the price is.  Like any other venue it’s a similar model, there might be a guarantee they want or they do a ticket split, even on local showcases we do a door split.  Its lovely, a lot of artists donate it back, it may not be a lot of money that we have because you don’t always get a lot of people through the door but on principle we don’t book people without expecting them to do it.

One of the artists I looked at was Alicia Armstrong

She was incredible – she came out of our partnership with Midnight Special Blues Club.  She was our headline act on Americana Festival, she was the replacement for Matt Long (Catfish) who is going through treatment at the moment for bowel cancer. She was absolutely incredible, made the hairs on the back of your neck stand out. Live she took the roof off, in a kind of effortless kind of way

She reminded of early Joss Stone

I think she’s better – she reminded me of the greats like Ella, Bessie Smith, Big Mama Thornton

Do you get artists who obviously know other artists?

Yes, we do, we get people who send people along, recommending the venue.

How did you adjust the venue for a good acoustic sound?

Yes we did, we had to do it for the change of use of the venue, the owners put acoustic panelling across blocked up windows. We are lucky, people we used aren’t professionals but we get sound and lighting engineers working pro bono for the community, so we always have really good sound.

When Joe and I set this up we said it had to be run by gigging musicians because they know what good sound sounds like. People need a really good sound and a really good welcome and that’s what both bands and audiences want.  People are on tour and are tired, or locals who work all day come in late in the day and they want a warm and respectful welcome from the audience, and a good sound, because artists have spent years honing their skills and they want to present those skills in a good sound environment.

Where does Fiery Bird go from here?

We have this place until 2026 and then we don’t know. We have talked to other venues and they are up and flying because they are in an area which is more accepting of the music. And it is a really big struggle, 18-20 hour days sometimes and Joe has a full time job in London.

And is that struggle because of the diversity in Woking?

No, no it’s not that. A lot of the support has come from an organisation called Surrey Minority Ethic Forum- 70 members represented all round the world. They’ve really championed us a lot.

We are fortunate we have great transport links here,  so it is easier to get to London although it now costs £20 to get there, so our mindset is to get people to realise we exist in their area. It is not that they are not engaged with the music, it’s that are not used to having this scene in Woking. We get people come in and say, “God it feels like we are in London, it’s not like being in Woking” and when we book like Irish Celtic bands , it’s like being in an Irish cultural centre.  Because we have had to move regularly people often say “we didn’t realise you were here“– we’ve been going for a long time but we are never a venue that’s older than two years.

And that might be the danger for Fiery Bird here, cos the building will be developed.

Yeah, well this is really do or die for Joe and me – we set this up to hand it over to the community, get it stable and with the principles embedded in it (new music and community), and then hand it over. In 2 years time I will be 60 so I’m thinking someone’s got to take this on. We are an unwitting music venue owner – we never went into it intending this, but it has how it is turned out.

So what you need now is for the community to really support it.

To really use it.

And then there will an initiative to move somewhere else more permanent.

Yes, that’s exactly it.

And it will still be in Woking.

Yes, because this is what Woking needs. We’ve been asked to help with other towns but we feel each local grass roots and cultural centre should reflect that town. And I don’t know their towns, I can tell how to do it, tell them what went wrong.

I used to go to a small club in Kelvedon which was in an old school building with kid’s seats and desks this high, but a great community spirit, just 150 max capacity

What you’re saying is so true because what we have realised is that we’ve made music venues out of so many spaces in the town – little spaces of concrete on the street, in the park, an old nightclub that was disgusting to clean up, a shop and an old corporate building. That is stressful but it is heartening to know the music can happen anywhere. So the lack of investment and realising what it can do for people – like here, we are a music venue but as you can see we have adults with special needs doing the planting, herbs and stuff, we have young kids from school experience – we have trained sound engineers from the people with special needs.  People don’t think twice about leisure centres or golf clubs or tennis but there seems to a big issues around one tiny weeny wafer thin grass roots music venue!

Do you think getting a named star would make a difference?

I think it would be helpful. Nick from Midnight Special Blues Club, his capacity is 80 and he gets big names and they are happy to play there because they know their reputation as promoters. Its also a sustainability issue because we have no revenue funding whatsoever, so we try and hire out space but people can’t afford to pay much. We want it to get to that stage where it is a generator of income for the community. Yeah a big name would be great, if anyone knows anybody!!

It’s not that they are very big names but ones looking for a profile in UK

Yes, Joe and I have even got to the stage of putting up musicians, to save their costs, if they don’t mind our dog!!

Is there anything you’d like to end up on?

I think it is getting people through the door – it is so true what you said it is getting people with the names but it is sadly it is often when people from outside like AUK and Asher, it’s great – it’s when people inside go ‘oh’.  Somebody had a go at me at our last venue “I didn’t know about this event (even though he was there) and I work right opposite” but it is quite obvious, there were seven posters right outside and he had to pass by them every day. People who have moved in recently will come to open mics or gigs and they say, “we just looked up live music in Woking and you came to the top of the list” but local people won’t do that. So you think what more can we do

I guess it is just luck.

And word of mouth. That works for a lot because you need a marketing budget and we certainly don’t have one

So your income is basically the money you get from the gigs?

From the gigs and the grant from Arts Council and hoping we can use them for a stronger platform for the next event.

And can you approach them again?

I hope so. I’m hoping to do a wider one – we are doing a multi-disciplinary event – arts, poetry etc And I want to do workshops with Indian and African and Celtic music that we hope local people can dip into and it is affordable so we hope they will say, ok I’ll give that a go, and they can discover, for example, Americana music.

And Americana is gaining a higher profile in the country.

I was brought up in an Irish household and some of the country music I heard at the Irish dances there was awful, but Americana,  I’ve learned to love it, through this venue and it is great I love it, the lyricism of it, the stories that get told

And some of the writing is quite amazing and lot of it coming from women.

Music has not been a great space for women and that seems to be changing .

Well, all power to your elbow and thank you very much.

Thank you and thank you for your interest.