Category: Manchester

Manchester Venues 201 to 202

This week I will complete the tale of my night in Manchester on Friday 29th August 2025. In a couple of recent blogs, I outlined the five new venues I had sourced and attended, and the evening finished with a sixth by making my debut visit to the Manchester Skate Park (known locally as the pump cage).

In 2001, there was a blanket ban on skateboarding introduced into the public spaces of Manchester. In reaction to this announcement a then 23 year old chap called John Haines co-founded a new venture called Projekts MCR and worked with Manchester City Council to fundraise and take ownership of underused land under the Mancunian Way. They transformed it into a 1400 square metre thriving skate, scooter and BMX park which also doubles as a community hub and is utilised by over 20000 people annually, most under the age of 35 and a quarter being female skaters.

Manchester Skate Park. Image Credit rideukbmx.com

They initially concentrated on the core logistics by obtaining funding for ramps, floodlights, heating and the obligatory café. They persevered for three years to obtain a long term lease and commendably gathered a further £2m in funding from various sources to expand and improve the site. It is now the largest community led skatepark in the UK with a core staff of 26 people.  

In those two intervening decades skateboarding has burgeoned as a sport to the extent of it debuting as an Olympic event at the 2020 Beijing games. The park is in the south of the city and lies five minutes’ walk from Piccadilly train station and it is in my eyes a perfect urban location for such a venture where you can go and embrace your inner Avril Lavigne!   

Around 2022 I initially became aware that they were also starting to stage gigs at the park, the roster concentrating in the main on guitar bands in synch with the backdrop. In March 2023 I endeavoured to make a visit as part of a double gig venture as I was also in attendance at an event at Gullivers that night, but in the end, I couldn’t make it work.  The site was a niche hidden venue until they raised their profile via inclusion on the roster of the Manchester Psych Festival.

 

Avril Lavigne in Sk8er Boi phase. Image Credit tapeciarnia.pl

So, on the night of my visit Marcus and I mulched down to the venue and encountered a very slow moving queue to enter the site. We grabbed an aperitif and encountered our first challenge as to where to position ourselves. An obvious constraint of a skate park is that it contains many peaks, hills and hollows which serve to restrict your viewing capability.  

For the support act we were literally perched on the side of a slope and throughout the evening we were wary as to where we stepped as there were many ‘ankle wrenching’ risk points, especially more so after a couple of scoops!

The first band on stage were Keo for which the main nucleus is the Keogh brothers (Finn and Conor), hence the name, who have music in their bloodstream as the majority of their childhood was spent touring around UK, Ireland and USA with their dad’s one-man music and comedy show. They were in a school band called the Deverills and honed their craft with tireless busking. On the night they provided a decent slab of grunge noise.

In the gap between the acts, we managed to upgrade our position to a raised platform with infinitely better views. The headline band were Gurriers, an act who took their name from the Irish term for a lout or a street urchin. They initially met and formed in Dublin in 2020, but their initial inertia was stalled by the pandemic. However, they continued to remain productive and prepped their material via numerous zoom calls and were thus ready to play their debut gig on Halloween 2021 at Dublin’s Workman’s club. They followed that by releasing their first album ‘Come and See’ in 2024.

Gurriers. Image Credit gurriers.net

I would concede they were not the most original band I have ever seen live, but the counterpoint is that they created some cathartic noise and most certainly had an energetic stage presence illustrated by one of the guitarists at one point perching off the gantry.   

One of the access routes in and out of Piccadilly station is via the busy footbridge which arches over London Road. As you head downwards towards Aytoun and Canal Street you can view to your left Manchester Piccadilly Park Square which is an open area ringed by retail units including the requisite phone repair shop.

When heading that way one evening to catch a train home I noticed they had set up a temporary stage in the square and there was a local artist called Sammy performing in front of a small audience.  

Manchester Venues 199 to 200

In the year 2000 (could be a song lyric there!) a bar opened on New Wakefield Street adjacent to Manchester Oxford Road train station. It was called the Font Bar, and the split-level site was a no frills establishment and became eternally popular with the University students due its cheap drinks. 

Font Bar. Image Credit manchesterbynight.com

For around a decade from 2004 the area was the location for an annual festival called Eurocultured where three local streets were closed and there were over two hundred artists playing over three stages, one being positioned under the arches near to the Gorilla venue, and the residual artwork from that festival remains on the walls today. The festival was initially founded because of that year’s enlargement of the European Union, though those events sound like they from another era considering what has happened since!  

They utilised other nearby bars and venues including Revolution, the Blackdog Ballroom and the much missed Sound Control and it was an event I had never heard of until researching it for this very article. The ethos of the gathering was to embrace and celebrate the European cultural heritage and created eclectic rosters and a sample of this from 2013 included three French electronic music composers who collaborated to form a gypsy jazz trio called Caravan Palace.  

There was also Swordfishtrombones from the Czech Republic, dub step from The Correspondents, Irish dance from the Japanese Popstars and some Ukranian folk dancing with the Orlyk Dance Ensemble to jig along to whilst becoming suitably merry if you imbibed the Swedish cider Rekordelig. Additionally, there was Datarock, labelled as the Norwegian version of ‘Happy Mondays’, who were known for wearing red jumpsuits, though for an unknown reason in 2018 their sartorial choice shifted to all-black versions!  The performers on the acoustic stage were covered live on the then local TV Channel M.

Datarock during their ‘Red’ phase. Image Credit lifeinnorway.net

The Font Bar survived the covid period and even added outdoor seating for the first time prior to the bar closing unexpectedly in January 2023. Their Fallowfield outlet had previously shut in 2018, but their Chorlton branch remains. It was not a bar I visited regularly but had sporadic forays with my last being in September 2022 when Paul, Marcus and I imbibed far too much after a Ducks Ltd show at the nearby Yes venue.  

After a fallow eighteen months, Mother Marys took over the reins and opened in June 2024 with the new venture headed up by nightlife gurus Joseph Finegan, Greg Dwyer and Chris Sharp. The first named had hosted many events at the nearby Gorilla and the Deaf Institute venues and the latter named brought with him the pedigree of also owning the renowned music venue The Fleece in Bristol. They devised a weekly event schedule of an open stage on a Monday, stand-up comedians and regular live bands and DJs across the two gig spaces on other nights.  

They invested in a bespoke KV2 sound system and a state of the art lighting system.  Food was also served with all-day breakfasts and in a homage to the previous history of the building a £2 cocktail called ‘The Font’ was also available. It then suddenly closed in November 2025 due to financial pressures, which was hugely unfortunate as they had at that stage been listed as a shortlisted nominee in the This Is Manchester Awards.

As you enter the bar, Manchester Mother Marys Upstairs Stage was directly facing you in an alcove above the stairwell. I first visited in August 2024 and saw a local singer called Damon playing there.  My next attendance was on 07/12/24 as part of the Year End Festival, where this was being utilised as the base and the ticket collection point.

Mother Marys. Image Credit secretmanchester.com

When I was collecting my wristband there was a local chap called Elijah Jenkins playing. Elijah is a soul singer who initially had a solo support slot with Reverend and the Makers before evolving into a four-piece band. I then headed out in the monsoon conditions to meet Paul in another venue before later returning to base camp. On the second pass we saw Patrick Saint James, a Derry born now Manchester based performer who has been on the support roster for Kate Nash.

When I first moved over to Manchester nine years ago, I was at that stage positioned on a total of 76 venues in the city, and I very quickly achieved my century. The new sites then kept being ticked off enabling me to record Manchester Mother Marys Downstairs Stage as my 200th different Manchester venue. The band to commemorate this milestone was a Rochdale female led combo called Foxglove who provided some soothing dream pop.