Make It Louder Events: The White Horse

During my second year of university, I decided I wanted to be more hands on and attempt to work within the industry. This is how "Make It Louder Events" came about. I worked in a pub called The White Horse located in High Wycombe during my first and second year of uni. Throughout this time I worked my way up to bar manager, although the amount of customers started to dwindle, and to be able to keep the pub going I had to find another way to attract people. I decided as the pub used to be an important venue for live music, I would try and revive that area of the business. We had mostly working equipment such as a Peavey PA and stadium desk (stupidly big for the venue but it looked cool?), a stage box that had one input that sounded like a tesco announcement mic, and some other old equipment.

This turned out to actually sound quite good and with that we booked our first gig!

This ended up being a record label party for a label called "Pookout Records". This was on the 16th July 2022. This consisted of an entire afternoon/evening showcasing 5 different bands. They also asked us to order in certain ales and wines. In total this day tripled the usual bar sales on a Friday. It also created revenue for bands in which they can take 80% of the total profit made from ticket sales.

I kept hosting gigs there, usually of the rock/punk persuasion. Overall, these nights would triple or double the usual income from the bar and would enable the business to make it through the quiet periods and still profit. These band nights happened weekly or sometimes bi-weekly until it's closure on the 22nd of December 2023. This closure was because the landlord became too old to continue running the business and ended the lease.