“We’ve been working with the council for anywhere between six months and twelve months,” he says. “Just basically trying to get things in place to make the venue more suitable for live music. We’re meeting the requirements for the local council to apply for certain things, like a live music licence, [and] obviously doing extra things off our own back, like sound curtains to limit the noise a bit.”
Considering how longwinded the process has been, it’s no surprise Moore’s taken extra measures to ensure the live music re-launch doesn’t backfire. “It came down to a head when speaking to the council,” he says. “They said the best way to go about it was to put an application in for a live music licence, then that way we should be able to do what we’re doing at the moment, but with the legal paperwork.
“We’ve gone through the process of working with the council, organising a meeting, then putting a sign in the window that remains for a certain amount of days, so if any of the locals or anyone else has any objection to it, they have time to voice their opinions.”
Moore’s clearly worked hard to make sure Iddy Biddy’s presentation of live music is above board, but certain members of the local community weren’t easily convinced. “These opinions go to the first meeting, where everyone takes turns explaining why they want this and why they want that and so on,” he says. “Everyone walks away from that and the council takes another meeting regarding what should go ahead and what restrictions should be put on a venue with the licence. Obviously with that meeting we had a lot of objections with a lot of the locals here – people were under the impression that if we apply for our live music licence, then our liquor licence would change and our trading hours would change to 3.00am, for example. But we’re in a residential area, we’d never get that licence even if we wanted to.
“It went to a council vote on the conditions we add that extra soundproofing to the venue and add a noise limiter to the venue as well,” he continues. “We haven’t had live music running through the venue for the past six weeks or so, just till we get everything up to standard.”
The lack of live music in the venue has caused Iddy Biddy to become quieter during the six week gap. But despite losing customers to other bars in the area, Moore looks forward with optimism.
“It just shows when we work with the council, we change the music up for more acoustic sets. Making sure we had more sound curtains and making sure the locals are down, everything works out. I’m happy right now that everything’s coming to an end. Hopefully once we get things set up it’ll all go back to normal.”
BY THOMAS BRAND
