Continuing the tale of the Live at Leeds multi event in 2014 takes us onwards to Leeds Wardrobe. The venue is situated on St Peter’s Square, Quarry Hill in the Cultural quarter alongside Leeds College of Music, Northern Ballet, Yorkshire Dance, and the BBC. It is accessed via crossing the very busy ring road.
The venue opened its doors for the first time in 1999 and has established itself as one of the city’s longest running independent venues and regularly hosts over 250 gigs per year. Its roster is primarily in the jazz, funk and soul domain and previous acts who have played there include Sly and Robbie, Beverley Knight, and Amy Winehouse.
The establishment models itself in a New York retro vibe and the ground floor consists of the main bar and restaurant. On our attendance I recall they had booted up some temporary pizza ovens and the Pepperoni’s were cooking up a storm. At our second Live at Leeds in 2021 they had some acoustic acts playing in the main bar, but not whilst we were in residence.
Stairs then take you down to the main venue with the stage immediately to your right which sits in front of a sunken dance floor and bars to the left and the back of the room. I liked it instantly as it felt spacious and had a good vantage point from all areas. It was blessed with a terrific sound system. There is also a local story that a ghost is resident in the basement room and the site is built upon an old well.
We purloined a seat at the back and the band on stage were CYMBALS (not to be confused with Cymbals with Guitars) from London town. They were a four piece post punk act and had just released their second album Age of Fracture. They splintered after that album and became and remain a two-piece to this day. They had an 80’s sound to them and resembled to a degree Bloc Party.
On our return to the venue at the delayed 2021 festival we saw a full set from a solo artist called Louis Berry, who turned out to be the last act we saw that day and we grabbed seats to the side of the stage as we had walked many miles traversing to venues far and wide.
He was a young Liverpool lad who had a very challenging upbringing as he was born to a heroin addict father. He could fair belt it out in a busker style reminiscent of Jake Bugg. After the 2014 gig, we headed up out of the basement, temporarily blinking in the afternoon sun prior to then grabbing some tea.
The next venue was Leeds Holy Trinity Church located on Boar Lane. It was originally built in the 1720’s and has Grade 1 listed status. In 2020 a major refurbishment took place and became the home to a mid-week ministry for city centre workers. They periodically have events there with listed for later this year a couple of movie soundtrack nights and as appears to be inevitable the obligatory tribute to Queen performed by a string quartet.
At the 2014 event they had a full day’s roster of acoustic acts performing with Marika Hackman near the top of the bill. On the bill as we attended was a young Irish folk singer called Orla Gartland from Dublin. She had only released a couple of EPs at that stage, but she has built a huge following on You Tube since by posting cover songs and has had over 24m views. Her music was featured on the recent BBC hit series ‘Normal People’ and she was firmly in the Joni Mitchell mould.
