How Live at Leeds is shaping the city’s future

Returning this November with over 150 acts including the likes of Katy J Pearson, Divorce and Man/Woman/Chainsaw, the festival gives a platform to breakthrough UK talent and an essential first step for local acts. Collaborating with local stage partners and bringing in a network of volunteers from the nearby university, Live at Leeds brings together the city’s creative community and provides an essential network through which careers flourish. Over the course of their near two decades they’ve given early plays to the likes of Sam Fender, The 1975, Charli XCX, and Stormzy.

As they prepare for this year’s new music marathon, taking over twenty venues with a broad church of genre - headliners span Fat Dog and Jalen Ngonda - Joe Hubbard, festival director, speaks to BEST FIT about how Live at Leeds continues to feed the landscape it calls home.

How did you start working for Live at Leeds?

I've been a promoter all my adult life. I started putting on DIY shows when I was sixteen, in Hull, where I'm from. After university, I got a job full-time in Hull, working for a venue group, booking in-house for them. I made the switch over here to Futuresound in 2018.

I think Live at Leeds was the reason that I wanted to come to Futuresound. Futuresound's a big company, we're fully independent, but we do an awful lot of headline shows year round and multiple festivals like Slam Dunk, Get Together, and Gold Sounds. But Live at Leeds was the one I'd attended as a fan beforehand and I just thought it was such a good festival. I'd also attended it with a band and I saw how well organised it was from that side of things. It's quite serendipitous that I ended up working on it because I just joined as a fan.

What’s your favourite part of the job?

Finding the bands... working with bands when they're really new and it's their first step. It might be the first time they've ever played Leeds; it might be the first tour that they've done. Finding those good artists and working with them from the ground up.

When I started looking after Live at Leeds, I booked CMAT to play Northern Guitars which is a 50 cap venue and she blew out the water - just her and an omnicord, and it was amazing. Now I've worked with CMAT every time she's come to Leeds since. She's done Live at Leeds in the Park, which is the other festival that we do, and she's now sold out the Leeds Academy with us this month. That story is exactly why I like doing Live at Leeds.

How can brand new artists get a chance to play Live at Leeds?

For the really, really new artists that might have no manager and no representation whatsoever we run an artist submission scheme. We make a concentrated effort to sit down and listen to all of them and then we narrow down a shortlist of the things that me and the other bookers like. It might have ten to twenty names on it, and then we decide with some external partners like BBC Introducing - Leeds & Sheffield.

If you're super grassroots and you're not local, then it would be artist submissions. If you're local, there's a stage with Launchpad, who are an organisation that supports new music in Yorkshire. Then BBC Introducing have a stage and you can speak to them, and there's a local label called Monomyth Records and they have a stage. There's probably thirty-plus local artist slots on Live at Leeds, and there's two or three avenues into getting those slots.

Who are the new artists you’re looking forward to championing this year?

I think Keo are a band that are already doing very well for how new they are. We've got Adult DVD, who are one of the most exciting local artists on the lineup. We've got Witch Post who I think are super good and I'm looking forward to having them, and Aaron Rowe who is probably going to be a big pop star.

It's quite competitive getting a slot on Live at Leeds because there's so many artists and not enough slots. We kind of hope that it's the very best ones that are on. So I would genuinely say all of them.

Do you think it’s getting harder for artists to develop into headliners?

I suppose the industry has been adjusting to if viral TikTok sensation equals long career. All the old metrics of what makes a successful artist can happen quite quickly now - you have loads of streams and loads of followers and that must mean you're successful. Watching it come out the other side now, where if artists blow up too quickly and they don't have the catalogue to back it up, that they don't always stay that big. I think it's like a minefield, figuring that out.

That's made it a bit tricky knowing exactly who's new and headliner level. It helps being a promoter as well, we do have a gauge on ticket sales of bands. Fat Dog, for example, we know that people do buy tickets to go and see Fat Dog and they're probably going to have a sustainable career.

Are the crowd at Live at Leeds coming out early to see the newer artists?

I think most of our customers are scanned in before the first band goes on stage and all of them are scanned in by 2pm. It's a one day thing and everyone wants to make the most of it. Most of our audience is music discovery. Most of them aren't bothered about the very top names, they just want to go out and find new stuff. There's a portion that do want to go and make sure they get in for Fat Dog and stand at the barrier, but again they're watching five bands before them, so they're still discovering. We make people discover stuff even if they don't want to.

How important is it for bands to connect with each other at events like Live at Leeds?

I think it is an important connection. There used to be three or four just on the same weekend as Live at Leeds, back in the day, and artists would go on the road and probably end up playing on the same stages and get to know each other.

I don't think this is how they met, but an example of this is if you look back at Live at Leeds 2018, Scott and Oli from Good Neighbors separately played solo projects on the same stage. I don't know if they met there, but they used to talk about community and having those right people next to each other. I think there was lots of that, and when there's less of them it's a bit sad.

And what about the industry?

Best Fit are stage partners and we have Dork, BBC, and Nice Swan Records. There's a few different ones which naturally gets some industry up, but we're quite careful of it not being an industry festival. Those gigs aren't always super buzzy because the people in the room aren't super buzzed.

I think at Live at Leeds, it's like playing a proper gig to actual music fans, and that's what we've always wanted it to be. Some industry come up and it's really nice to have them, but it's not the focus. The main thing is for actual fans.

How much does Live at Leeds benefit from the universities in the city?

A lot of bands come up and attend the Conservatoire, and there's Leeds Beckett as well which does music courses like music management and business. They do a lot of our volunteer work where they'll have people that want to be stage crew or work in the industry and they'll come down and help volunteer with our stage reps on the day and learn a bit about that.

It's like the performers at the Conservatoire, and then all the people running the show from Beckett. Leeds is well set up from the student level.

How does the event give early opportunities to people in non-performance roles?

There's paid staff on every single stage in multiple roles, but then as an add-on to help our stage reps or artist liaison, there'll normally be one or two volunteers from Beckett University who will come down. They'll come down and get stuck in and learn about how a show works on the busiest day you could imagine.

A lot of people that have done that have become the people that work on the stages for us in paid roles once they've left university, when it's not part of the course. A couple of them work with us year-round and one of them works in the office. We'll go for meetings at Leeds Arena and talk to the staff and they'll be like, ‘I volunteered at Live at Leeds in 2015.’ I think it actually helps.

How important is Live at Leeds for emerging talent in the city?

I'm not going to say it's the only cool thing about Leeds - there's still other good shows they can go and play - but I think it's something to shoot towards when you're a brand new band.

If we’ve booked a band for Live at Leeds and they’ve not been announced yet, but that band is releasing a single and has their PR going out, they're always like, ‘Please can we just mention in the PR that we're playing?’

It's a string to their bow. It is something to show off about.