The Whiskey Jar
The World’s Best Open Mic and The Legend Behind It All
Located on Tariff Street on the cusp of Manchester’s famous Northern Quarter, The Whiskey Jar draws you in with its warm amber glow and the sound of the city’s finest live music. Their Tuesday and Wednesday open mic nights in particular are what really sparked my fondness for the establishment. Hosted by the legendary Joe Mcadam, each night features a bill of 6 to 8 musicians playing up to 3 songs ranging from all genres, performing both originals and covers. It is an experience like no other! I sat down with Joe to discuss his story, and just how he created an event known across the world as the greatest open mic night in the universe.
How did we get here? How did Joe McAdam come to be the host of the greatest open mic night in the universe?
In a nutshell. I was born in Scotland but I lived in London previous to Manchester and I had a record deal. I was signed to Island Records with my band Cherryfalls. I was there during the same era as Amy Winehouse, we were actually good friends. You don’t have to put that in. It’s a full CLANG name drop innit? It was a lovely time, it was a weird time. Our career on Island didn’t go quite as well as Amy’s, obviously, and my life transitioned. I met a girl. She was from Manchester and I thought “Well I could do with a change” so I moved to Manchester with her, and when I got here I realised that all I really knew how to do was music. So I started busking, and doing covers gigs, and joined a band (The New York Fund), and did a gig in here. That gig went so well that afterwards the owner said “Would you like to take over our open mic night?”. I said yes and that was twelve and a half years ago. I had been in Manchester for a couple of years and knew quite a lot of good musicians. The first week we put the show on I invited all my mates to come down and play, and they were all fucking amazing musicians so the first show just exploded. People knew about it within like a month and we were packed.
And in those early days was the structure and formula as tight and refined as it is now?
Yeah, it’s been like this right from the very beginning. I kind of think I stole that. The keyboard player in Iron Maiden, Tony Moore ran an open mic night when I first moved to London. He’s just a phenomenal guy, he’s a huge supporter of music and the arts, and he ran this open mic night. And, when I first moved to London I would go out on the tube every night of the week and meet people and play as much as possible, trying to get signed and get famous. Then when I found his night I just gravitated towards it, I used to go every week. It was very similar, you weren’t allowed to talk, it wasn’t as blatant as “Shut The Fuck Up” like here, but it was unwritten. He was hugely supportive of me and I didn’t realize it at the time that I was kind of soaking up all this future knowledge but it meant all this was dead natural. I didn’t feel like I was copying anything from him at the time, it was just how an open mic should be run to me, but years on I realised that I had emulated that. One thing I’ve always done that’s different is I’ve always invited at least half of the artists in advance. It’s not all prebooked, but I try to program about four acts so that I know they’re gunna be of a high standard then the other spaces go to new people. So it still has that open mic feel, but people coming know they’re always gunna see some fucking magic that blows their mind like, “What am I doing here? How is this free?”.
I know you touched on it there but, how do you manage to keep such an amazing standard of talent, twice a week, every week?
I don’t vet anything, I think the secret is what I mentioned about making sure I get some really high quality artists for each show. I have a pool essentially of world class artists and I just always make sure to get a few of them in every time. I’d love to put a bill full of those people on every night, the people that I think are amazing, but it’s not about me. I’m not the arbiter of what is good and what is not, and that doesn’t create an environment to support new musicians. It gives people the opportunity to cut their teeth here, flex their muscles a bit, or stretch old limbs that haven’t been stretched. It tends to elevate what the artists think they’re capable of. Having those backbone artists pulls everyone up, and rather than being scary it seems to be uplifting. Performance under pressure or whatever it is.
What do you think it is that makes The Whiskey Jar so special? Because, to us this place stands head and shoulders about anywhere else.
It’s a bit of a perfect storm. I host slightly differently to other people. There’s the idea you’re not supposed to talk which isn’t always the case at other open mics. There’s the standard of music that we have here. The sound works amazingly. It shouldn’t, because half the PA is behind the stage, and that’s just like, no, you just don’t do that. It should be feeding back all night long, but it doesn’t, for some weird reason. The room looks amazing, the lights, the brickwork soaks up the sound, the way the bar is laid out, the staff, the fact that the management let me swear at people. There’s a million and one things. I used to run five shows a week in different venues, and the other shows were fantastic but this one just always had something special about it. So even if you take me, and you take the same kind of artists, and you take that equation, and you put it in another room, it just doesn’t work the same. There’s something about this room. It’s just got a magic to it.
When you took on the open mic did you know that you had something special on your hands or that you’d be doing it for twelve and a half years?
I did not, that’s the honest truth. I kind of took it for granted, and didn’t take it as seriously as I should have at the beginning. We could have built this into something world-beating. We could have been streaming it, and built a brand, and fucking monetized it, and all that shit. But I’m glad none of that happened, because I love it for its honesty, its truthfulness, its authenticity. I love it for the fact that it’s basically still word of mouth. We do a bit on social media, but almost all of the people who come here, and all the artists who play here, come because someone told them about it. People from other continents come and say, “I met someone in a bar, and he said, if you’re ever in the UK, go to the Whisky Jar”. In the UK, not just Manchester. I had no idea it was going to become this thing. And we’re not some massive Goliath, but I love that I get to do this week in, week out, and I love that I get to see entirely new waves of artists coming through, other artists moving on and doing bigger and better things. And I hope that that continues. I hope we keep getting new artists that come through, and we nurture them to the point where they can’t come and play here in the nicest possible way.
What do you think makes open mics such a vital part of a local music scene?
They serve such an important purpose and play such an important part in developing new art and new artists. And even if it’s not developing new artists, it can be people who have been playing for years and who want to try out new material and see how that lands with an audience. That’s why they’ve always been a part of the grassroots level of the music scene and they always will be.
What they represent to the industry is very individual to each show, each venue and each host. Some of them are just designed to get bums on seats and drinks and mouths. And those can be just as valid for the artists because it teaches you, if you’re going to be a performer, that you’re not always going to be in the perfect room. You’re not always going to be surrounded by people who give a fuck. Shows like ours give people a space where they can be heard. Which has huge importance because that can be the first time that people actually come up and speak to them afterwards and give them that validation where, saying “your work means this to me” rather than just you’re a good singer or I love that cover you did.
As a musician, and someone that was signed. What is it that makes you focus on this and spotlighting other artists rather than performing yourself?
The reason I support these acts and don’t make it about me, the reason I’ve sort of gone from, let’s say the fucking heady heights of being signed to Island Records and that life and living in London and being on a major label to doing this is I never really felt like I belonged in that role as an artist really. There’s a lot of self-doubt in me and in the creative process and art and the validity and the worth of my own work. But I guess subjectivity, objectivity, internal and external is very different. I can see when someone else is amazing. And I know I can also see when somebody else doesn’t think they’re very good. From a subjective point of view, I can see if they’re maybe doubting it and what encouragement they might need or how I would have felt in that position. And that’s one of the joys I get from this. It’s helping to lift people up and maybe help point them in the right direction or give them a bit of advice. I take what I do and what this night is and what it means to the community and what it means to the artists a lot more fucking seriously now than I did 12 years ago because I know how many people’s lives it’s touched and how many people’s lives it’s changed as well. I see that now and I’m very thankful for it.