A love letter to The Louisiana: LICE on the importance of the legendary Bristol venue

Posted On February 2, 2025February 2, 2025

“It is a tremendous privilege,” LICE frontman Alastair Shuttleworth says of being invited to perform at Bristol venue The Louisiana to kick off proceedings for this year’s Independent Venue Week celebrations. “The Louisiana is, I think we’d all agree, the gold standard for what an independent venue should be.” It couldn’t possibly have been put more eloquently and concisely just how important the venue is to the Bristol music scene, and LICE, more than most, are acutely aware of the continued role it plays as a thriving hub for culture in the South West’s largest city.

Despite existing as a pub before 1996, The Louisiana only opened its doors as a music venue due to chance after a fire broke out at the Fleece, another notable gig space in Bristol. Searching for an immediate solution to their issue in the hope that they wouldn’t have to cancel their upcoming shows, two separate promoters asked if they could use the upstairs space at The Louisiana to host shows for Placebo and Super Furry Animals, and despite not even having a stage at the time, it marked the start of the family-run venue’s illustrious history.

In the years since, the Schillace family have continued to run their venue as one of the first ports of call for acts on their maiden UK tours and have seen the likes of Dua Lipa, Coldplay, The White Stripes and The Strokes pass through their doors on their routes to stardom. However, while this undeniably weighty claim to fame is something they’re proud of, with gig posters of all the above and more adorning every wall of its interior, it’s their continued support of the ever-inspired local music scene that sets them apart from other venues in the city, and what keeps its patrons visiting year-round.

With Independent Venue Week returning for its 12th year to highlight the importance of local establishments such as this that foster the creation and enjoyment of music at a grassroots level, it only feels appropriate that they’d recruit a band like LICE to fly the flag for The Louisiana. Fiercely independent from the moment they formed in 2015, the experimental noise-rock outfit could not possibly have existed for so long without the support of the small venues in the city they formed in taking a chance on them.

The way things started for the group is a story that many fledgling bands will recognise, having formed while studying together at the University of Bristol and taking advantage of the free practice space in the basement of the Student’s Union to flesh out their earliest material. Shuttleworth vividly recalls just how difficult it was for them to even get a gig at the time, and how very few promoters and venues were willing to roll the dice and allow a bunch of novices to put on their own event. “We didn’t know what the fuck we were doing,” the frontman admits. “We didn’t have demos for the most part, and we absolutely didn’t have social media until we started playing shows. We were just doing everything ass-backwards.”

“We played a couple of small things,” Shuttleworth explains, “but we played our first show properly – a gig we put on ourselves – at the Crofters Rights,” referring to another venue and former staple of the Bristol live circuit. “We then managed to convince the Louisiana to let us put on a show that was well received. Big Jeff tweeted about it, and then overnight, people started messaging us and trying to put us on.”

For those not in the know, Big Jeff, aka Jeff Johns, has made a name for himself due to his persistent dedication to attending DIY shows in Bristol, and he is considered part of the furniture at most venues across the city. Having Johns attend your show is the highest praise any new act can ask for, and having him in your venue is a great advertisement for the event programming, given his encyclopaedic yet discerning knowledge of the live music scene. Whether good or bad, Johns will gladly list off years’ worth of shows he’s been to at The Louisiana, and LICE can proudly sit in good company alongside the Scissor Sisters and Four Tet as being up there with his most memorable.

Put simply, LICE can be grateful for spaces such as this for helping them in their early years, but it’s far from just a gig venue in the eyes of the band. “It’s such a community space,” bassist Gareth Johnson chimes in. “I think Mig, the proprietor of the establishment, understands the need for spaces to foster bands in their early years, even if it’s using the live room as a space of practice in the day.” The band are a fine authority to speak on the venue’s recording facilities as well, having used the space in the venue’s basement to record their second album, Third Time At the Beach.

The record, while far from being a comforting listen, was only possible due to the generosity and warmth offered to them by the venue. “I think it’s fair to say that what we found with recording is a big part of its being comfortable,” Shuttleworth says of the experience. “Obviously, we know the folks here well, but it’s a really good space. I think we’d all recommend people ask about recording here.”

Before the band moved to Bristol to pursue their studies, only synth player and violinist Natalie Pla had experience living in an area that offered variety and the capacity to put on shows, but she says that her earliest experiences as a teenager in East London were still radically different to what she experienced after relocating. Growing up with parents heavily involved in the salsa scene, her first taste of putting on an independent show was as a result of the increased government funding around the 2012 Olympics.

“I remember writing a little council application when I was 16,” recalls Pla. “I said: ‘I would like to do a rock show, please. It will be under this railway arch, and I need £300. I have three friends that are in bands, I can get about 50 people, and we’ll sell glow sticks.’ They were like, ‘yeah, fuck it.’”

While Pla’s early exposure to promoting independent shows is a far cry from the world in which LICE and The Louisana operate, the rest of the band, having grown up in places that didn’t have such a thriving live music scene, had their formative experiences in Bristol, and can recall shows at The Louisiana as being what kickstarted their passions.

Guitarist Silas Dilkes was raised in nearby Cheltenham, and with Bristol being the most local spot to see the bands he was into, he would frequently catch trains into the city to gain his valuable core memories. “I remember seeing Drenge here when I was 16. It was early days, and there were maybe 15 people in the room, but most of them got together to crowd-surf the singer from the front to the back.” Despite the room being barely 10% full at the time, it’s moments like this that really capture the spirit of being at The Louisiana – nobody leaves without a highlight to share at the next event.

The sentiment from Reading-raised Shuttleworth is the same, and while he also recalls other venues such as the People’s Republic of Stokes Croft as being places where his bandmates dragged him and opened his eyes to a world of far more experimental acts, it was always The Louisiana that served as a hub for meeting other like-minded creatives. “Being a fan of these musicians but not really appreciating that they hang out in the same spaces was a big deal. I’d say it’s still the case. When we come to gigs here, I will so often bump into other bands that we like in the crowd.”

There’s no singular scene revolving around the venue, but even still, The Louisiana appears to have a gravitational pull around it in this regard, continually managing to draw in pockets of new patrons from across Bristol’s scattered musical map. If there’s indie pop one night, you can bet there will be technical death metal a few days later, but these separate enclaves of music fans still treat the venue with the same reverence due to how it shows no predisposition to showcase any one scene on the outer margins over another.

During LICE’s nascent years in the city, many venues that were a staple of the local and touring circuit came to an unfortunate demise, with cult favourites such as Start the Bus being among those that punters sorely miss. On the flipside, independent venues like Strange Brew represent a triumph in the face of rising costs and the pandemic, and despite having first opened their doors in early 2020 before two years of major adversity struck the live music economy, they’ve managed to create an identity around themselves as being a hub for the electronic and avant-garde scenes in the city.

With so many casualties and new venues attempting to make their mark throughout this tumultuous period, The Louisiana has remained resolute in its commitment to providing a universal experience for gig-goers and continues to be the beating heart of the city’s scene, not just in music, but in tangentially-related areas as well. In recent years, they’ve hosted multi-disciplinary events, with visual media, photography and art exhibitions regularly popping up, and they’ve also helped Shuttleworth develop his own projects outside of the band in the past.

By day, Shuttleworth is a music journalist, and he cut his teeth in the industry by running a zine that focused on the city’s underground called The Bristol Germ. “I certainly wouldn’t have done The Germ if I hadn’t had so many great experiences in independent venues like this,” the singer claims. “I used to make student films about local music, and the first one I did was upstairs and was the first filmed interview with IDLES. Doing that and seeing it on the student YouTube channel, and then gradually watching IDLES become the biggest British punk band of the 21st century, is an affirmation that there’s a creative profile that it offers people.”

Since that fabled first show at the venue where they had to beg for a booking, they’ve been invited back multiple times, with each being more memorable than the last. Pla recalls a show that the band played prior to her joining the band five years ago that forever sticks in her memory. “I actually got to be in the crowd for one of their most insane shows upstairs. It was a real feral pit, like disgusting and sweaty.” In addition to this, the last show they played before their IVW appearance was unique in the sense that it was seated due to Covid restrictions still being in place at the time. “We just played [debut album] Wasteland from start to finish with no gaps,” explains Johnson. “That’s definitely the most memorable show that we’ve done here, and we played twice in one day, which was kind of weird.”

With the crowd allowed to revert to their old feral ways, their IVW performance wasn’t just an honour to be at due to it marking LICE’s return to a spiritual home of theirs, but was a welcome reminder of just how vital The Louisiana is for bands within the community who are at all stages of their careers. “It’s been quite instrumental in every stage of our time as a band,” eulogises Johnson, reflecting on a decade worth of memories. “They create as little barrier as possible for artists so you’re not being treated any differently to bands with agents. They just want to foster a community of music in the venue, and having this contact with the artists and being close to bands and musicians is an important part of the space. It makes people feel more connected to the venue.”

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