From the Start

So this one is a thank you to the people who were there from the start. From the start is the most important phrase in this piece. They turned up when the room was a rumour and the invoice was a favour, and the thing that gets me is how many of us are still growing together twelve years on.

“They turned up when the room was a rumour and the invoice was a favour.”

George Hudson · Festival Producer

The Ones Who Were There

ID&C, who have put our name around a lot of necks. Print 2 Media, who have printed things at hours no printer should be awake. Steve at Yamaha Music London, who put pianos under our players when we could barely put chairs under the audience.

Jane Doyle at the Soho Clarion, who gave a new club column inches when the Clarion had every reason to wait and see.

Wendy Hardcastle, and her beloved late husband Leslie, who between them gave the Soho Society decades of service and made sure we had a slot on the Soho Society Hour on Soho Radio more or less every year it has run. Never once because I remembered. It was always a Hardcastle on the phone, reminding me the slot was there, booking me in, and asking why I was late. Leslie spent decades protecting the streets we now play in, and died in 2023 at 96. He believed there were two Sohos: the one you visit at night, and the quiet one where people live. This festival tries to belong to both. Wendy is still here reminding us which is which, and still booking me.

Paul Pace, who started Spice Jazz at the Spice of Life in 1998 and now programmes Ronnie Scott’s. Paul was booking musicians into a Soho pub before some of our artists were born, and has never once pulled up the ladder.

Dini and Sam at My Place, for the sausage sandwiches in the mornings. No breakfast, no festival. This is not a metaphor.

Sean, from Cookhouse and now Grasso, for a table to escape to when the day needs a pause and a plate. Like the festival, the rooms change but the spirit doesn’t.

Alun Thomas at Thomas & Thomas, and later Jack. Every licence we hold has Alun’s fingerprints on it. He is one of London’s top licensing lawyers, the man who helped get 5 Hertford Street and the House of St Barnabas open, and he still picks up the phone to a jazz club that wants to close a street with a week’s notice. Without Alun there is no first licence, no first room, and no list.

Nigel Williams, Chris Gilvear and Nick Pitts at Jazz FM, who kept saying our name to a national jazz audience when we were a room above a pub.

Square, whose infrastructure took the money when the money finally arrived. And yes, Amazon. I hate to say it. But a business run at the last minute is a business run on next day delivery.

Over forty artists from the original Soho Live family are still part of it, still playing our rooms, still forgiving the soundcheck times. Among them Andy, who I am singing with on Saturday. Thanks for being there from the start, mate. Try not to let me count us in.

Our production team, who see the look and get the van keys anyway. Nathan, business partner and the person who has to say “how much?” out loud so I do not have to. My family and friends, who have stuck with the chaos for twelve years and stopped asking when it calms down.

The list gets longer every year and there are far too many to fit here. New rule. Do ten years in this circus and you get your own blog post. Several of you are closer than you think.

Why Any of Us Are Still Here

Soho hands out inspiration for free, on one condition. You have to know it was here first.

The history is a landlord, not a backdrop. The people who last respect it, add to it and never try to own it. The moment you think the place is part of you, the place moves on and you read about it in the trade press.

That is also the trap. Soho is a magnet for ambition, and ambition here gets you into trouble faster than anywhere in London. The rents, the licences, the 3am conversations with neighbours who have opinions about your bins. To last a decade you need more drive than most, but a village kind of drive.

“For staying power in Soho you want to be known by the newsagent, not the Evening Standard.”

George Hudson · Festival Producer

Side note: Rippon, my local stationer and newsagent on Dean Street, still sells papers from behind a shopfront built in 1791, 36 years before the first Evening Standard. The Standard gave up printing daily in 2024.

City ambition burns out. Village ambition gets you a nod from the doorman at the place you cannot afford yet. Most of what arrived new in Soho around the same time as us is no longer here. Every name above is a reason we are.

And the Rest Is Last Minute

The production team has a phrase. “Uh oh. He’s got that look in his eye.” It arrives about a week before doors, late enough to be a problem, early enough that nobody can stop me. Over the years it has produced a Prosecco express lane, a double decker bus and a closed street. This year it produced an advert against AI made entirely by AI, with dogs playing poker in the middle of it, and the supporter pants.

A few people saw the dogs and reached for rage. Which is exactly the point. Get out of the slop and into real life. A human is playing a room near you. Everything we do, that ad included, is an improvisation in service of the one thing that matters: sustainable careers for live musicians.

It means a ton more work and stress on the biggest week of the year, and the team does it anyway. That is the whole point of the list above. Nobody leaves a festival talking about the load-in schedule.

Thank You

Three nights to go. Here’s to the next decade of mad ideas, all of them very much at the last minute. If you want to be on the list next time, the easiest way in is the same as it was twelve years ago: come to a show. See what’s on tonight at sjfpass.com, and if you can, back the festival at soho.live/support.