Newport is a city that breathes. Carving through its centre is the Usk, a tidal river whose banks inflate and deflate over the course of the day. Depending on when you observe it, the river can look completely different. One minute it’s animated and reaching towards your toes, the next it’s revealing its muddy banks, naked and shrinking from view.
The city’s music scene has experienced similar contractions. At its modern peak of the mid-to-late-’90s, the small city near the Wales-England border (population: around 150,000) was dubbed “the new Seattle” by the New York Times – such was the prominence of bands Feeder, 60 Ft. Dolls and Dub War, along with a host of venues including the legendary TJ’s.
The city’s music scene continued to thrive into the new millennium, birthing nationally established acts including Skindred and Goldie Lookin Chain. However, during the early 2010s, a decline set in. TJ’s closed in 2011 and, in 2013, a controversial merger saw the University of Wales, Newport become part of the University of South Wales. All arts courses (along with their sizable student population) moved out of the city, with the remaining few courses shifting their focus to “entrepreneurialism”.
However, to hear members of Newport’s music scene tell it, the city’s music scene is resurging with the opening of multiple new venues and a growing crop of young bands. “It’s the best I’ve seen it for years,” says Sam Dabb, owner of Newport venue Le Pub and former Welsh liaison to the Music Venue Trust. “It’s got to be 15 years since it felt this buzzing. That’s when the uni was still open, losing it was a terrible decision and a massive blow.”
“Everyone’s killing it on the smaller venue level right now” – Joe Wag, The Cab
Studies have shown that students have a sizable impact on city centre demographics. According to one estimate, students were responsible for an average of 44 per cent of population growth in English and Welsh city centres between 2001-2011. Despite the enforced exodus of young, live music-hungry arts students, under Dabb’s stewardship since 2012, Le Pub has grown into a Newport institution whose 100-capacity main room has, just this year, hosted the likes of Benefits, Welly and Welsh acts such as HMS Morris and Cerys Hafana.
Indie pop four-piece Murder Club were born within the Le Pub ecosystem: several members have worked for the venue and they use its downstairs practice rooms to rehearse. “Le Pub has helped since the very beginning,” the band tell NME. “We had our first ever practice there during lockdown and we wouldn’t be anywhere without it.”
Other notable acts that frequently play Le Pub include The Nightmares, goth rockers signed to Venn Records and recent tourmates of Creeper and Funeral For A Friend, as well as R1-backed emo-punks Failstate. Both bands are playing a role in continuing Wales’ fertile lineage of 21st century post-hardcore and emo.
Just across the road from Le Pub sits the Corn Exchange. The 500-capacity venue opened its doors at the start of 2024, with a show headlined by recent Sub Pop signees The Bug Club, who hail from the nearby town of Caldicot. The venue was constructed with an aim of providing the city with a mid-sized venue, following the closure of the long-standing Newport Centre, and is run by a group of volunteer directors, who operate as part of a not-for-profit Community Benefit Society. This model is becoming increasingly commonplace in the UK, with the number of community-owned enterprises in the country increasing by 49.5 percent over the last five years.
Sam Dabb is one of these volunteer directors, along with Emma Stowell-Corten, who is also Newport City Council’s Cabinet Member for Culture and Communication. Her role, which involves formulating a practical vision for the city’s cultural development, is the first time that there’s ever been a Cabinet Member with ‘culture’ in their title on the Newport Council – which she describes as “a good signal for how serious we’re taking all of this”.
Bolstering this support from the council is the city’s Shared Prosperity Fund, which helped the Corn Exchange get off the ground, plus an additional 25 percent rates relief for leisure venues. An initiative that began during the pandemic to offer business rates reductions, it comes atop the national 40 percent figure set by Welsh Government. National bodies have also played their part, such as Creative Wales, who’ve supported 17 grassroots Welsh venues, including several in Newport, via its Music Revenue Fund.
Looking a bit further underground (although the collaborative-minded Newport music scene would baulk at such underground/popular distinctions), there’s The Cab. Playing host to an intriguing blend of community theatre and hardcore punk, The Cab has rapidly become Wales’ key punk venue since its opening in 2021. The “small, family-run community space”, as venue owner Joe Wag describes it, it has played host to numerous touring bands, including overseas hardcore acts like Spy, Restraining Order and Conservative Military Image.
Wag stresses that The Cab is “big on allowing under-18s in”. This has allowed the venue to nurture a wave of young bands, many of which are now established on the fertile UK hardcore scene, including Violent Offence and Deprivation of Liberty. “Your standard gig here is 60 people who are all mates,” Wag explains. “We’re completely non-profit so we try to keep everything as cheap as possible. A standard local gig we try to keep under a tenner, then it’s four cans for a tenner at the bar.”
No matter who you speak to about music in Newport, phrases like ‘not for profit’ are consistent. It’s a community-conscious, proudly working-class city, described by Stowell-Corten as “a place where things are made”. From its role in the still-celebrated Chartist movement to its once-booming docks and steelworks, Newport’s identity is bound up in the idea that it’s a place where things are crafted out of nothing but their raw materials.
Newport prides itself on overcoming odds in order to create something beautiful. The nationwide picture for music venues is undeniably gloomy: according to the Night-Time Industries Association, in 2023 at least 125 music venues – 16 percent of the country’s total grassroots music venues – shut their doors. Just last month, The Moon in nearby Cardiff announced its immediate closure, which has left a gaping hole within the Welsh live music ecosystem.
But the various players of Newport’s music scene retain a dogged optimism. “Everyone’s killing it on the smaller venue level right now,” enthuses Joe Wag. Sam Dabb even suggests that “we’re heading into another golden era.” Theirs are simultaneously optimistic but down-to-earth perspectives, ones that sum up this storied and defiant city.