When Decklan McKenna announced his string of intimate shows this summer, I was gobsmacked. As a Teesside lass, it was a strange thing to see a name I associated with festival stages and increasingly large stages make a pilgrimage to Stockton – and not just Stockton, but The Georgian Theatre, a 200-capacity room that I played with my first band in sixth form.
The rest of the dates were similarly unexpected, places like Stoke, Inverness, and Dundee that rarely make it onto the itinerary of an established touring artist. The reaction online seemed to confirm just how unusual this was. Under the Instagram announcement came comments like ‘the south does exist btw mate’ and ‘those are definitely locations!’ Funny, perhaps, but revealing. For some audiences, the idea of a major artist deliberately playing somewhere outside the usual circuit seemed alien.
For those of us from the North East, it isn’t. We are used to travelling to places like Manchester or Glasgow for gigs. You learn the train times and how late the last one leaves. You accept that seeing your favourite artist might involve a hotel room and an expensive pint in another city a three-hour drive away. So when someone comes here, it feels different.
There is something particularly meaningful about an artist choosing a place that isn’t an obvious tour stop. It suggests an awareness that audiences exist beyond the cities that have already been anointed as cultural hubs. More importantly, it puts money and attention somewhere that genuinely needs both. Look at Middlesbrough Empire, for example. A venue that many locals recognise simply as their night out destination has recently announced shows from indie staples including Blossoms and Kasabian. This gives people a reason to stay local and gives the venue a reason to keep its doors open. It also makes going to a gig feel more like part of the fabric of your own town.
The alternative is increasingly concentrated touring. Harry Styles’ 2026 UK run included twelve nights at Wembley Stadium, enough to set a record for the longest single residency by a musician at the stadium, with another three dates announced for 2027. There is an obvious logic to this; if you can fill 90,000 seats, why wouldn’t you? But somewhere between the 200-capacity room and the 90,000-capacity stadium, there is a whole ecosystem of music that can be very easy to overlook: the ecosystem where most artists start.
I know the feeling personally. When I’m not panicking over summatives at university, I am a backing vocalist and recently performed at Stockton’s ARC Theatre. Eight days later, rising indie band Overpass were taking to that same stage. On paper, this is a fairly insignificant coincidence. But to a musician trying to work out whether there is a future for them in their hometown, it feels much bigger. Seeing artists come through local venues makes the possibility of a career feel tangible. You can watch someone on a stage in your own town and think ‘I could do that’ – not in some distant, abstract version of the music industry, but here. This matters when so much of the industry still feels like it happens in clusters. London and Manchester can seem like the places where things happen, with other areas feeling like somewhere you have to leave in order to be noticed. Artists such as McKenna playing smaller regional venues challenge that idea. They tell local musicians that their scene is worth investing in, and audiences that they are worth travelling to.
Moreover, a gig is never just money going to the artist. It is a ticket bought from the venue, a drink at the bar, a taxi home, a promoter getting paid, a photographer shooting the show, a sound engineer working the desk. It is money making its way through a local creative economy. According to Music Venue Trust’s 2025 report, 53% of UK grassroots music venues made no profit in 2025, while 30 venues closed permanently and 175 towns and cities lost regular touring shows from professional artists. Grassroots venues are the rooms where bands learn how to play, where future headliners first discover that anyone is listening to them at all.
Simply put, grassroots music is infrastructure. It is the support slot between the headline set, the first audience before the thousands. When those rooms disappear, another rung disappears from the ladder for local scenes.
An artist doesn’t have to play every small venue in the country. I’m not creating a call to arms against Harry Styles and forcing him to swap Wembley for a Tuesday night above a pub. But the occasional detour matters. The unexpected town, the venue that doesn’t immediately make sense on the tour plan – these are the things that keep a music scene from becoming a handful of cities connected by tour buses. Because scenes are built locally, and they are kept alive locally. Eventually, they produce the artists the world and his wife are desperate to see.
Sometimes, the biggest thing a musician can do for a scene is simply show their face.
Featured Image: Roberto Rendon via Unsplash