BELFAST LIFE:Most Belfast bands head to Dublin or London in search of success, but a music centre founded by an 'NME' veteran is hoping to plug the creative drain and give artists a chance to make their mark without leaving the city, writes Bryan Coll
ON THE GROUND FLOOR of a former bonded whiskey warehouse in Belfast, a long line of photographs snakes its way along freshly whitewashed walls. Portraits of local music legends, such as Van Morrison, and more recent home-grown heroes, such as Duke Special, make for an unofficial hall of fame of Northern Irish music.
Peter McVeigh, the 23-year-old lead singer of west Belfast group Eskimos Fall, wants his band's photo to be the next.
"We'll just have to retire one of the auld fellas," he says, pointing back towards the punk bands of the 1970s.
Eskimos Fall are mid-soundcheck, preparing for their first live gig at Belfast's Oh Yeah Music Centre. The sprawling three-storey site is one of the more recent additions to Belfast's Cathedral Quarter - once a forlorn site of post-industrial dereliction, now rebranded as the city's cultural nexus.
The band's set will follow a Q&A session with the Performing Rights Society, the royalty-collection company for UK-based musicians. Local bands and singers, most of them in their teens and early 20s, are learning how best to exploit the lucrative world of downloads, ringtones and, for old time's sake, CDs. One musician asks how he can claim royalties from songs on a compilation album, while a skinny-jeaned and long-fringed group ask for legal advice on intellectual property.
"These are the secrets of the industry that people here never used to know about," says Peter McVeigh. "Now it's all laid out in front of you."
As for secrets of the industry, few people know more than Oh Yeah's founder and director, Stuart Bailie. A former assistant editor of NME and a well-known habitue of the Northern music scene, Bailie says the creation of Oh Yeah fills a long-standing void in Belfast.
"In the past, if you wanted to make it big as a band, you had to escape to London or Dublin," says Bailie. "We want to stop that creative drain and be the cheerleaders for local talent."
Some of the North's best-known musical refugees, such as Snow Patrol and Ash, whose 1996 hit single gave the centre its name, have been enthusiastic backers of the Oh Yeah project. Both bands made donations to cover the first phase of renovations, and Gary Lightbody, Snow Patrol's lead singer, lobbied Stormont ministers to back the project.
"Our expat rock'n'roll diaspora has been very generous," says Bailie. "Their response is always they same. They wish this place had been around when they were starting off."
The absence of a bar in Oh Yeah is a clue to the centre's aspirations to be more than just another venue for gigs. Performances, talks and workshops are held around the brand new stage on the ground floor, while upstairs a large room has just been converted into office space for 10 local start-ups.
Bailie hopes that these promoters, managers and independent labels will become the nuts and bolts of a fully-fledged music industry, meaning local bands can have their business needs attended to at home.
"It could either work brilliantly or be a big disaster," says Bailie, pointing to the lines of soon-to-be-filled desks arranged like a kind of creative call centre. "But part of the fun with a project like this is seeing just how far we can take local talent."
Oh Yeah only started hosting regular events this summer, but the centre's work is already bearing some musical fruit. John D'Arcy, a 19-year-old singer-songwriter attending the talk, has heard that "all the cool bands" are using Oh Yeah's in-house recording studio, run by members of acclaimed indie group Oppenheimer.
As we speak, D'Arcy is busy working the room, handing out flyers for his own event at Oh Yeah, an interactive gig called Rate My CD, where guests can pick their favourite tracks from a longlist of songs D'Arcy has written for his forthcoming album, as well as choosing designs for the album artwork. "The great thing about Oh Yeah is that the door is always open," says D'Arcy, who had his website put together by an Oh Yeah-based designer. "I think it will become quite an inspirational place for young people."
Aware that the North's music scene tends to be dominated by "middle-class kids from good schools with guitars", Bailie is keen to open up the centre to new kinds of music and new kinds of music fans. Oh Yeah has recently rented space to a drumming circle and an African music group, and the centre is developing a cross-community outreach programme.
"Everyone agrees that talent is one of our great natural resources in Northern Ireland," says Bailie. "Our challenge is to harness this and to give enthusiastic people the opportunities they deserve." Rounding off the night's entertainment is 30-year-old Ciarán Gribbin, better known as the much-feted Joe Echo. Gribbin, from Castledawson in Co Derry, recently signed a management deal in London and is working on the film score for Heartless, a new picture directed by the British artist Philip Ridley.
"Things are finally happening for me now," he says modestly. "But that's only after a decade of hard slogging. Hopefully places like Oh Yeah will mean the younger guys won't have to wait so long."
Gribbin believes that talk of the North's musical renaissance is more than just peace-dividend hype.
"I actually think the music scene here is a lot healthier than in London," he says. "The main difference today is that bands have started supporting each other. Before, if you were successful, people here wanted to bring you down."
The next evening, Eskimos Fall are playing a short gig in a music store in Belfast's Victoria Square shopping centre, to mark the launch of their new album.
From an initial band of wide-eyed MySpace groupies in school uniform, the crowd soon swells to about 50, as more and more Friday-night shoppers are compelled by Peter McVeigh's powerful voice to linger in the aisles.
According to Stuart Bailie, the band is fending off offers from record labels - yet more evidence of the rude health of the local music scene.
"In my day there were only ever one or two bands that would get signed," says Bailie. "Today there are about 20, and I think we'll see a lot more very soon."
Before Oh Yeah becomes fully operational, there are a few last DIY jobs to carry out. The recording studio needs soundproofing, a leak in the roof needs to be repaired and the last spot of wiring must be completed. Judging by the calibre of the bands being championed by Oh Yeah, one last alteration wouldn't go amiss: a few extra spaces at the end of that hall of fame.
Oh Yeah Music Centre, 15-21 Gordon Street, Belfast, 048-90310845, www. ohyeahbelfast.com