Independent Venue Week is an annual 7-day celebration of music venues around the country and a nod to the people that own, run and work in them, week in, week out.

With hundreds of venues having signed up to host shows during the week, I was fortunate to bag a ticket to see the legend that is Frank Turner at The Cavern in Exeter.

As I approached the venue via Queen Street, I could see a BBC 6 Music mobile broadcast vehicle parked up on the side of the road, this is where Steve Lamacq would be hosting his show from this every evening. Amongst the guests on his show were Frank Turner and The Velvet Hands who were performing in the venue later on. Steve also chatted to Pippa and Dave who run the venue and are key players on the local music scene in Exeter, without the support of these two, the vibrant musical landscape would be a baron, dark and soulless place….

SOUND OF THE SIRENS were meant to be opening tonight’s show but as they were also booked to play another show in Taunton, time got the better of them and they had to pull out at the last minute.

SAMANTICS opened up the evening with a spellbindingly fine set featuring vocals, a loop pedal and a ukulele which were all used to create a multi layered sound with some very amusing, factual and informative lyrics which certainly made you stop and think. Themed around mental health issues that Sam himself lives with every day, it was refreshing to see someone using his talent to help spread a positive message about what can often be a taboo subject to be swept under the rug rather than confronted and shared with loved ones. Sam went down a storm and was the perfect act to open this sell out show.

Up next were St Austell / London garage rock quartet THE VELVET HANDS who took the bull by the horns and dazzled the audience with their heady blend of spiky guitar led garage rock, taking people down similar roads to the one The Strokes did years back with a confident, cocksure swagger that proves these chaps are no one trick ponies. Look out for these at various festivals throughout the UK this summer and on their headline tour which takes place in March.

FRANK TURNER needs no introduction, as well as fronting his superb band (The Sleeping Souls) he also carries off his solo duties in fine fashion, engaging with the crowd, drawing them in and making them part of his performance with various sing-a-long opportunities throughout his set. Tonight saw Frank on stage for 90 minutes, knocking out hit after hit which were lapped up by the capacity crowd who were literally packed like sardines into the Cavern to see their hero perform.

Frank thanked Samantics and The Velvet Hands for warming up the crowd and explained that Sound of the Sirens couldn’t be here owing to the double booking I mentioned earlier. He did go on to tell us about a time when he and the band played at the Exeter Phoenix and Abbe and Hannah (aka Sound of the Sirens) thought they’d try and blag their way onto the tour bus which was parked nearby. They had managed to hoodwink security into believing that one of them was ‘Anna’ and she had just finished working in the bar and they wanted to see Frank, she even went on to explain that he had written a song about her. Now to most, you’d just assume this was hearsay but if you know Abbe and Hannah, you’d actually realise that this is the level they will have stooped to in order to meet Frank! Their bubble was burst when Frank overheard the conversation and came down from the bus to explain that Anna was actually a fictional character made up for a song….. it was a very amusing story that saw the room in stitches!

Frank spoke of Independent Venue Week (he added that it should be called Independent Venue Year) and applauded the support that the likes of Pippa and Dave from The Cavern provide to local bands in giving them slots on their legendary stage which has played host to some amazing acts in the past such as Biffy Clyro, MUSE, Fugazi and The Wedding Present.

His set consisted of pretty much every classic track that you could muster, ‘Recovery’, ‘Losing Days’, ‘The Way I Tend To Be’, ‘Four Simple Words’ made an appearance alongside ‘Long Live The Queen’, ‘Don’t Worry’, ‘1933’, ‘Little Changes’, ‘Be More Kind’, ‘Brave Face’ and ‘Blackout’. There were more, lots more but I lost count as he was literally flying straight into another as soon as one had ended. I think it’s pretty safe to say that fans certainly got their £10 worth tonight!

Frank is renowned for what anyone else might think of as a ‘punishing tour schedule’ which often sees him jetting across Europe and sometimes the world to appear at festivals and events all over the place, I often ask him about this when I interview him and he has said that things have started to slow down as members of the band have started families, which means that they are “choosing their battles a little more these days”. Tonight was show 2445 and it won’t be long until Frank returns to Exeter (at the Lemongrove) to perform solo once again in front of a larger audience, showcasing tracks from his latest album ‘No Man’s Land’ as well as peppering the set list with a good dash of classic hits throughout the night.

Frank went on to talk about the time when his band (Million Dead) were booked to play at The Cavern in 2002, they were the only band booked to play amongst a night of DJ’s who were garnering respect for playing the songs of the moment to the masses that had congregated in the main room. As soon as Frank et al took to the stage, all but 4 people exited the room and took to the bar until their set was over. Someone heckled him and shouted ‘KORN’ and Frank politely refused to play something by them as it wasn’t the sort of music that conveyed well in an acoustic environment, someone else offered up ‘Slipknot’, to which Mr Turner said he’d be happy to play the Half Man Half Biscuit version of a song about Slipknot and proceeded to play this;

 Vatican Broadside by Half Man Half Biscuit

“The singer out of Slipknot went to Rome to see the Pope
The singer out of Slipknot went to Rome to see the Pope
The singer out of Slipknot went to Rome to see the Pope
And the Pope said to his aide:

“Who the fuckin’ hell are Slipknot?
Who the fuckin’ hell are Slipknot?
Who the fuckin’ hell are Slipknot?
In relation to me getting out of bed?”

The night was a complete success, people were hanging around the merch table at the end of the show and when frank emerged from his dressing room, he made a beeline to the bar, ordered a single shot of tequila (for medicinal purposes he added), necked it, grabbed his belongings and apologised to everyone for not being able to hang around as he had a 5:30am start the next day to get to the airport to head straight out to Germany where he was on tour with the band, supporting The Dropkick Murphys! We’ll let him off on this occasion!

I’d like to extend a MASSIVE thank you to the BBC for coming down and supporting the evening, it was great to catch up with Steve Lamacq and chat about bands that are lighting up his world. Sarah Gosling who hosts the local BBC Introducing show in Plymouth was there too, we had a great chat about local bands and said how great it was that events like these could take place and the importance of people getting out to live shows as often as they can. As Frank said, if there was nowhere for bands to play live music, nobody would come out and watch it and before long, going out to see a band would become a thing of the past, let’s all work hard to ensure that this day never comes!

Review by Steve Muscutt