The Music Venue Trust yesterday announced that its Revive Live Tour - a partnership with The National Lottery that originally took place this summer - will return in January.
The programme will see artists like Keg, The Wytches, Cultdreams, Calva Louise and LibraLibra tour around a network of grassroots venues. Meanwhile, Enter Shikari, Becky Hill, Bastille, Feeder, Kojey Radical, Maisie Peters and The Coral will all headline one-off gigs at one of their favourite grassroots venues as part of the initiative.
The shows are all underwritten by the National Lottery, with the aim being to remove the risk for artists and venues that are still in recovery mode following the COVID-caused shutdown of live music.
Enter Shikari will play Club 85 in Hitchin as part of the tour. The band's Rou Reynolds says: "Since we were fifteen we've been playing grassroots venues up and down the country. They were our home and gave us the opportunity to develop into the band we are today".
"One of those venues was Club 85", he goes on. "So it's so great to be able to return and play there again after more than a decade and help highlight the fact that these venues need support, especially right now after they've been sat empty for nearly two years".
"Without grassroots venues like Club 85 and all the other places we played as kids - a lot of which have already, sadly, been consigned to the history books - there's less of a chance that four teenagers can change their own, or anyone else's, lives", he goes on. "They are breeding grounds for new music as well as strong communities. And that's why we're doing this".
Tickets for the second Revive Live Tour go on sale on Friday.