'It’s about bricks and mortar': How Northern Guitars is protecting Leeds’ grassroots music scene
Northern Guitars isn’t just a bar or a guitar shop – it's the first rung on the ladder for countless musicians, and thanks to a recently successful campaign, its future as a grassroots music hub is secured for decades to come.
It’s rare to enter the Call Lane venue on a quiet night. Northern Guitars might be smaller than some of its neighbours, but with live music on its stage seven days a week, there’s always something happening.
Over recent months, Northern Guitars, together with Sheffield venue Gut Level, has been part of the Own Our Venues scheme - a campaign designed to protect grassroots venues by shielding them from the pressures of the commercial property market and securing their long-term future as cultural spaces through community ownership.
“It’s about bricks and mortar,” said Rick Wade, who co-owns the booming venue with founder Dave Baguley. “The campaign isn’t about buying failing businesses. It’s about buying a building, and that building will then be preserved and leased back to a business that promotes grassroots music.”
That long-term perspective is rooted in a history stretching back more than three decades. Northern Guitars began in 1989, when Dave and his former business partner Dusty ran a guitar shop in Hyde Park. In 1991, the business moved to Call Lane, where it continued selling new and vintage guitars for decades.
When Dusty retired in 2015, Rick stepped in, and the newly formed duo applied for an alcohol licence.
Over the last decade, the store has evolved into an essential cornerstone of Leeds’ grassroots music scene. Hosting live music every night - from ticketed events to free performances - Northern Guitars has served as a launching pad for numerous artists who have gone on to achieve local, national and even international success.
The Own Our Venues scheme, led by Music Venue Properties (MVP), was set up to provide a secure future for grassroots venues across the UK by transferring ownership of the buildings they occupy into community hands. Since launching in 2022, the scheme has already secured buildings for venues including The Joiners in Southampton, The Croft in Bristol and The Ferret in Preston, with more across Wales and southern England.
The importance of securing a building’s future has been highlighted elsewhere in the city. Earlier this year, Boom was forced to close after its landlord ended the venue’s lease to pursue redevelopment plans - a reminder of how quickly circumstances can change when a space doesn’t control the premises it occupies.
Though Boom has since launched an ambitious new canalside project, its experience illustrates why the Own Our Venues model has resonated with places like Northern Guitars.
Northern Guitars is now among the venues being put forward for formal admission to MVP, with all new members due to be considered at the next directors’ meeting on November 28.
For Dave and Rick, the campaign - which raised more than £1.5 million - offered the chance to plan ahead without worrying about what might happen to their lease.
Rick said: “If you were going to sell [the building] as a landlord, you could turn it into anything. So keeping grassroots music venues running is MVP’s sole ethos.
“They are music people who want to preserve grassroots venues for the use of grassroots music, as opposed to it being turned into a kebab shop.”
"I think in any business, not just this one, uncertainty is destabilising. You’re always looking to the future. Anything that comes through MVP gives us a bit of extra security, and that’s invaluable."
“I mean, we’re booked up for the next three months, and we have live music every night,” added Dave. “We’re not looking over our shoulders at the landlord, thinking, ‘what’s going to happen?’ We’re secure.”
With its future secured, Northern Guitars can continue doing what it has done for decades: giving emerging musicians a stage, nurturing the local scene, and keeping live music at the heart of Leeds.