Last year, two much loved Landlords retired and the group of reprobates who had formally been their bar staff, became a people without a place, a team without a project, (and most importantly) piss-heads without a pub!! All good friends, they knew if they stuck together, with their combined experience, contacts and skill set, there could be exciting new things on the horizon.
So the idea for The Crooked Crow Bar was hatched: An independent Music Bar, with an obscenely large stage, good beer and awesome events. We found a venue in Leighton Buzzard, (a former Blockbuster Video unit), perfect for what we needed, the right size, close to town. Just a few weeks later, on January 17th, we opened our doors. We had no idea what to expect. But people came, in fact, they kept coming and coming! Everyone seemed genuinely excited for Leighton Buzzard to have a new independent venue and wanted to show their support.
Prior to lockdown, we hosted awesome gigs every single weekend, from hip-hop to punk, ska, to metal. But we were barely up and running and had so much more in the bag, waiting to launch. Now it's just a waiting game until it's safe to reopen and trust us, when it is, we are planning to come back with a BANG!!! But everyday we remain closed, or restricted to how we can trade, the uncertainty of whether we can financially survive grows. The Crooked Crow Bar is part of a national initiative launched by Music Venue Trust to prevent the closure of hundreds of independent music venues.
Our venue faces closure because even if we were allowed to open on July 4th, the government guidelines are likely to still insist on social distancing, meaning if people were 2m socially distanced we could only accommodate 12 people in the building (this would grow to 36 people, if social distancing reduced to 1m). Having not been able to trade at all for 4 months, but still having to pay rent, service charges and utilities, it is vital for us to be able to turn a profit asap! Opening safely on July 4th at a maximum capacity of 30% is going to be almost impossible to turn a profit and therefore, we, like many other music venues across the country, really need your help.
Your donations will be used to pay for bands and staff during a period where we will not be able to trade at full capacity. We are (perhaps optimistically) hoping this will only be for a couple of months, as we absolutely CANNOT WAIT until things can go back to normal and we can all be squished together, sweatily bouncing up and down to an awesome band and sinking a few beers!!!!
If we hit our target, and we can prevent the closure of our venue, everything above the amount we need will be donated to the Music Venue Trust GMV Crisis Fund to protect other venues just like ours, right across the country.
If you pledge £20 or more to our Save our Venues campaign you can get one of these awesome T shirts (approx. 2-3 week delivery)
Good luck guys we are missing the music we hope the funding works out ,Paul & Linda