Here is the place to write a Show Report for your venue, detailing as much information as you can that might help shows there in years to come. Include things such as dimensions of stage, passing traffic, good spots to flyer, useful promo, tech equipment, ambient noise; anything that will help give shows a good idea of the venue before they arrive. **Please include your show number so we can confirm your show report is in the right venue forum**
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My show number was 187. I was on at 20.15.-21.15. Southsider is a very nice venue and Lorraine did a great job as venue captain. The room is the back room of a pub and can hold 30+ but feels full with 20. I just flyered outside the venue every day. To be honest, I don't feel like many people came from flyering as most of the people walking past the venue appears to be Edinburgh locals going about their usual business or people on their way to the Pleasance (and I'm not a great flyerer anyway). However, I found that most days I found I still had decent sized audiences made up of people I hadn't flyered. I assume these people came because of the WBB or because Southsider is a well-established venue so they knew there'd be shows on there. The room is only separated from the bar by a curtain so there is inevitably some noise bleed from the bar. This varied day to day, depending on how busy the pub was. This made one or two shows 'tricky' but these dates were more than made up for by the other dates that were nice. Because of the noise bleed in the evenings, I think the room is better suited to compilation shows or two or three handers than solo shows in the evening (I was running a compilation show) though I'm sure it's still fine for solo shows earlier in the day, before the pub gets busy.
Show number 16 Southsider is a good venue, and the staff are very welcoming and helpful, and allowed us to store all our flyers etc there in advance and even put some posters up before we got there. The location is not great for flyering nearby but George Square and Bristo Square are fairly close and good places to flyer during the day, though I would say more than half the people coming to my show weren't flyered, they seemed to find it in the WBB or the app. The room itself is at the back of the bar and as it's a sports bar, when the bar is full there's a lot of noise bleed, so that can be tricky if your show coincides with a football match. Other than the noise bleed, the sound setup and lighting was good, but I think our venue captain, Lorraine, brought some of that stuff herself, and Lorraine was a great captain all round, very helpful and accommodating.
Hello, I'd echo the above from the guys, the pub are lovely and super helpful. Perfect venue.....apart from the noise bleed. We partially got around this by having 4 speakers, one at back of room and one at the middle of the seats down the side as well as the two at the front. Other helpful hints are to try and use a duvet and attach to the curtain to dampen the sound. Defo best place to flyer is Bristo square. Got a fair few in from over there, short 5 min walk. Max in room is 35. Seriously lovely venue, with supportive staff
After set up and before
Hi, this is the second year I've been at Southsider which should tell you what you need to know. The staff remain lovely and supportive. But we flipped the room this year, and had the performance space as you enter the room, with an aisle by the banquette seating. This allowed us to seat up to 50 folks in the room. We rigged speakers at the front and one additional speaker at the back of the room. This largely allows the audience the best audio experience. Noise bleed has always been the only issue with this venue, otherwise it is a top notch place to perform. We tried to get around the noise bleed by adding a curtain. Which helped, a little. The main issues occur during sporting events or their weekly pub quiz, at time of writing was on a Thursday. We asked them to postpone the music round to the changeover times, which can help. We did have a little turf war with a few of the locals with the table under the TV being the spot for quite a noisy weekend group of pals. I chose to kill em with kindness, and it dissipated a bit. No point in upsetting the regulars too much, let the managers deal with it directly and be as nice as pie to them. The venue is being painted and renovated as we are leaving, but they remain keen to support next year. It will be interesting to see how the pub evolves over the year. On speaking with the manager, he is keen to get good audio in the back room, set up for next year. He has explored getting a door, but sadly this cannot be done as they would need a fire exit, if there were to be a closed door, which will not be possible. Overall, a wonderful spot, would highly recommend. Happy to chat if you need any further information.
Lorraine is such a great venue captain! I filled in for one night here, and she explained everything about how it worked. The only problem was that the speaker ran out of charge, but it was okay. It was a really great venue--nice and close to everything, and packed with kind, supportive people!
Third year in this venue, I would say nothing has changed from my show report above, the staff remain super supportive, and the space is a good one. They are looking into Aircon for next year (we had three fans and put glasses of iced water in front of them on hot days which helped slightly) and an update of the sound system, so that may be useful for 2025. Noise bleed remains an issue, so any additional inventive ways around this would be appreciated. Two sets of speakers go someway to alleviate this. Overall, a great room, seating 40-45 comfortably.
Had a gorgeous run again this year at 4.30pm. Averaged 29 for the run. Love the space and layout - seats 45ish. Couple of things: 1. Room gets hot but pub is looking at air con so hopefully remedied by that. If not additional fans would be great. 2. On weekends I had to turn away a lot of people so might be worth looking into a holding place system like banshee? (Only really seemed needed Saturdays- but I had quite a bottle neck for queueing). Lorraine is a queen - all venue capains should be like her.
Hi all, here's my show report. I only did a week so my experience is a bit more limited than others but I'd pretty much echo what others have said. Tidy room and the staff at Southsider are dead nice. The pub itself does get a decent amount of passing trade and is easy enough to describe it's location while flyering. I mainly flyered either right around the corner near specsavers in the hour leading to the show or further up South Bridge the rest of the day. We did get a few times where people would poke their heads around the curtain so maybe a "show in progress" sign would be helpful (apologies if this already exists and I missed it.) Lighting is more than ample, we could probably have gotten away with just one light. Like others have said it was very hot some days, so additional fans or air con would be helpful. In terms of seating, there's a nice variety and from the perspective of a plus-size person, the long bench seating at the side is great. There is noise bleed but I'm not sure what else can be done as (mentioned above) they can't put in a wall and door due to fire regs. It might be worth looking into an acoustic divider maybe. And I can't finish this report with mentioning the venue captain Lorraine, what a full-time legend. A reassuring presence who just nails being a venue captain. Great work