As Tone Deaf reported yesterday, the owner of the Convent Club in Woodchester, Gloucestershire made headlines after footage of him cutting a gig by Scottish singer Finley Quaye and kicking him off the stage began making the rounds online.
The troubled Quaye, who has a history of trouble with the law, was scheduled to perform at the Convent Club as part of a live broadcast, but the shambolic performance ended in disaster when promoter Matt Roberts called time on the gig.
“I am so sorry guys, I have worked in the industry 28 years, I have a reputation,” Roberts told the crowd after taking the stage and motioning to the band to cut it out. “You guys, go home,” he then told the Brit and MOBO Award-winning singer’s band.
Roberts’ actions soon went viral on the internet and he’s now spoken to NME to clarify what motivated him to cut the performance. According to Roberts, there was already trouble brewing before Quaye even took the stage.
“We broadcast [shows] around the world; the thing was live, the show was live at nine o’clock [and] the guy turned up at five past nine,” said Roberts.
“He had no back line, he had none of the instruments that were in the contracts, he had none of the band that were in the contracts. He had session musicians that had never played for him before.”
“I personally waited in the car park until he arrived so I could made a judgement in the car park whether he was a to fit to state to go on, so it was my responsibility, and I spoke with him before he went on.”
“And I considered that there could be magic, so that we would get him on. We got him on an hour after the show began online. Sadly, from that point on, you’ve seen five minutes of a 30-minute riff.”
“All he did is that for 30 minutes before the last five minutes, and the crowd were turning so you hear on the video they were whistling and it got very uncomfortable in the room.”
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“This is not the sort of venue where you would get cups of piss chucked over the stage, you know, the membership here, and the people who come to the gigs, love music and they’re a very attentive audience, so we had to stop it.”
According to Roberts, his conversations with Quaye at the venue were “disparate” and it was “hard work to get him on the stage”. The promoter said he hasn’t been in touch with Quaye since the incident, which made international headlines.
“The last words from me to him were seen as I was on stage, the team then escorted him out the building.” Roberts also defended his decision to remove the ‘Dice’ singer from the stage, despite prior knowledge of the musician’s troubled past.
“No promoter in the country wouldn’t know his background,” Roberts said. “So you know what you’re booking. It wasn’t a vilification of Finley Quaye, there was no motivation actually. I just threw somebody offstage, it could have been anybody.”
“Artists who are working in the professional field have an obligation to the audience to deliver a professional product,” he added. “Fundamentally, we wish him well but he needs to sort himself out.”
