As nationwide music tours as we know them are likely to be put on hold until at least 2021, it’s the little guys who are getting hit the worst. Verge recently reported on a study from the Music Industry Research Association that pointed out the average working musician in the US overwhelmingly relies on touring as their primary source of income, and thankfully music distributors like Bandcamp have made impressive efforts to keep indie labels and artists afloat. But the touring business is a two-way street; let’s not forget that independent venues aren’t even afforded the revenue from online record sales.

Go to https://t.co/bg5xJBkjRV at 5pm BST TODAY to watch my conversation with the always-inspiring and genuine Joe from @idlesband, and more importantly donate to help support independent venues across the UK during this difficult time pic.twitter.com/U6fCdiz1Sv

— Anna Calvi (@annacalvi) May 25, 2020

Independent Venue Week is an initiative created in 2013 that celebrates the people who own, run, and work in independent music venues across the country. Given the state of live music this year, their work has become more vital than ever. In aid of a crowdfunder campaign they launched earlier this year, IVW are running ‘Take 5’: a series of online conversations between British musicians on their life in music, from early gigs, shows they’ve loved, venues they love and more widely how music has been such a positive influence in their lives.   Take 5’s inaugural session from last week (above) featured Wolf Alice’s Ellie Rowsell and Calvi, the idea being that the series of conversations chains from one artist to the next. At the end of yesterday’s episode, Talbot revealed that in next week’s he would be talking to fellow Welshman James Cox. Comment your questions for the Crow’s frontman by 5pm today via the Twitter post embedded below.

James (@__CROWS) and I will talk about all the stuff next week. Please comment your questions for him below with #IVWTake5 and I’ll ask him them aggressively and we can get to the bottom of this. Get your questions in by 17:00 today. All is love. pic.twitter.com/9RJb0vr7IJ — I D L E S (@idlesband) May 26, 2020