IDLES donate guitar equipment to help raise funds for music venues

IDLES
IDLES © Charlotte Patmore

The band are donating some of their guitar kit in support of Music Venue Trust’s #SaveOurVenues campaign. 

IDLES and Hiwatt have joined forces to raise money for grassroots venues in the UK. The Bristol band are donating a Hiwatt amp head and guitar cab as part of a new raffle that can be entered from today (23 November). The equipment was recently used by the band during their Abbey Road live stream.

Music Venue Trust launched the #SaveOurVenues campaign in April to highlight the crisis independent spaces are facing during the pandemic. More recently, it launched a traffic light campaign to spotlight the grassroots venues that are on the brink of imminent, permanent closure.

“We would have been in the middle of gigging season right now, where grassroots music venues and musicians make their bread and butter, they need your support now more than ever,” says IDLES guitarist Mark Bowen. “Grassroots music venues are where music progresses, they are the places where future festival headliners start out, its where the music on the fringes gets an opportunity to grow and turn into popular music of the future, they are places of escapism and to speak to our times, make us think of the world around us. They are our culture.”

He added, “Our government derides independence in culture and especially the music industry, this short-sighted view of culture and its economy will be all of our undoing’s. Support an independent venue/artist/movement where you can.”

You can enter the raffle here. All £5 entries will include a code to a listening party for the live album IDLES Live at Ramsgate Music Hall.

Read IDLES’ 2020 cover story, taken from The Collections.