We love Paisley Stage

#WELOVEPAISLEYSTAGE #SAVEOURVENUES #SAVEOURVENUESNZ

Based in beautiful Napier City is Paisley Stage, we are a live music lounge bar established in 2017 in the top floor of an old gymnasium. Created by Lucy and James Rochester to provide our community with a professional and friendly place to come and enjoy the joy of good live music.

Our mission is pretty simple, performers to have a place to hone their craft and share their musical prowess in a setting that sounds and looks great and provides a facility where acts from grass roots to professional touring acts can perform, sell merch and record.

We are not a bar that opens all week, we open for show nights only, usually Thursday to Saturday with the odd Wednesday or Sunday show. We host a wide range of acts here from Jazz to Metal, Burlesque shows and Tribute acts, we host shows for the Napier Music Academy (a business located within our building also) which gives kids the opportunity to perform with all the bells and whistles of a big show for their Mums and Dads, we host industry workshops and record bands on non weekend nights.

We started on the smell of an oily rag, our focus is not in profits but in community growth, we still drive cars from the 90’s! We continually put back into the venue when we can with upgrades to our sound and lighting systems, we know if we can provide a great environment for our performers and audience everyone has a good time and the performers are given the best opportunity to give a stellar performance.

Owners Lucy and James are there with skill sets that make Paisley Stage special, James AKA JR is an experienced musician and audio engineer and is the main inhouse engineer at Paisley, a regular performer in various tribute acts and solo guitar/vocal artist. He takes pride in achieving a great sound for acts and understands the importance of musicians feeling comfortable, valued and at ease that their mix out front is giving them the best opportunity to wow the audiences. JR is also a luthier by day so often can be found fixing guitars for people prior or even during a performance, his guitar obsession means the inhouse backline available is pretty great for a provincial venue, vintage Marshall amps, huge Ampeg bass rig, venue piano and fabulous house drum kit make touring that little bit easier if a band can jump in a station wagon with cymbals, guitars and pedals to go do a show. Full multitrack recording is available for most shows as an added bonus allowing bands to capture their shows for further promotion and releases. Lucy is our wonderful people manager and creative designer, responsible for our quirky décor, an afficinado of Lava lamps and retro furniture. Lucy also has a great pair of ears when behind the mixing desk though she is usually found behind the bar solving the problems of the world while serving your favourite bevvy and supplying hugs and costumes when needed.

We are thrilled to be part of the Save Our Venues initiative and feel the help provided by our wider community, you all, will go a long way to ensure we can continue to keep operating our business in whatever ways we can as we navigate the coming months in the wake of the current situation, the only thing certain ahead is a lot of uncertainly with most if not all international acts being cancelled, restrictions on numbers and social distancing guidelines etc. Luckily NZ is teeming with amazing acts of super high calibre, we see this as an opportunity for kiwi musicians to be the focus of our live music locally without having to compete with the big names to get people to shows, of course we don’t want the internationals to be out of the picture and when it becomes feasible for the big acts to return we welcome them with open arms as they are vital for our industry, we hope our local economy can have enough strength to keep our professional services in sound, lighting and event management going until these bigger players can return as a life blood to these companies.

We urge you to support your local venues and local businesses, including us of course, we will continue to put in the hard yards and do our best to get the country rocking again and with your support on our side we can make it happen. Kia Kaha Aotearoa and thank you.

Run by a dedicated committee of music lovers - including Reb Fountain, Matthew Crawley (Golden Dawn / Strange News), Lucy Macrae & Tom Anderson (Whammy Bar), Rohan Evans (The Wine Cellar) and Reuben Bonner (Banished Music) - the #SAVEOURVENUES team seek to unite in support of Aotearoa's live music venues and music scene. #SAVEOURVENUES aim is to help generate support for crucial, original, small live music venues right across New Zealand, in cities and towns. And they are calling on everyone to help to raise awareness and funds, and trigger a national response strategy in support of a thriving musical culture in New Zealand.