Music Venue Trust (MVT), the UK charity which represents hundreds of Grassroots Music Venues (GMVs), announce a 20-date tour by rock trio Bilk. The MVT Presents Bilk tour is the first to be funded by the Liveline Fund which was created by MVT and live music advocates Save Our Scene (SOS) to distribute funding directly to grassroots venues, artists and promoters with financial support raised by contributions from arena and stadium ticket sales. Artists including Sam Fender, Katy Perry, Coldplay, and Enter Shikari were early adopters of the Grassroots Levy and have enabled Liveline to begin fuelling the future of UK grassroots music.

The tour will enable the Essex-born band to do a much longer tour than usual, returning to some of the venues that supported them early in their career as well as towns and cities they would not have been able to otherwise. In 2024, MVT revealed that just 12 locations, all of them major cities, remained as primary and secondary touring circuit stops, acting as regular hosts to grassroots tours.

Rebecca Walker, Live Projects (MVT), said “For the last four years MVT has been building relationships and partnerships through our Revive Live and United by Music projects to explore how best to deliver economically viable, sustainable, touring activity. Working with grassroots artists, agents, managers, promoters, and venues, we are practically demonstrating the positive impact that contributions from arena and stadium ticket levies can have for the Grassroots Sector when we act collaboratively.”

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Speaking about the tour Bilk’s lead singer, guitarist and songwriter Sol Abrahams said “This tour is obviously gonna be chaos. We’ve been wanting to do a tour of grassroots venues for a while as we’ve seen a lot of these places keep closing down and it ain’t good for music.

“Everyone deserves a chance to grow and get seen by people if the music is good and the grassroots venues are instrumental in that for upcoming bands and artists. When we were coming up as a band, those are the places we’d play week in and week out. With small venues closing it’s going to be harder for good, organic music made by musicians from normal backgrounds to get out there and leave upcoming artists hopelessly banking on a viral TikTok for exposure or being an industry plant. We need real life, we need real energy, real connection, in the flesh, in person. That’s what it’s about. That’s why we’re doing this. It’s gonna be sweaty, intimate and a good time so to our fans, we’ll see you there”

The Liveline Fund is committed to delivering the best new and emerging live music back into the UK’s towns and cities. Working with artists, venues, and promoters, Liveline is building models of best practice to revive live music in communities right across the country.

George Fleming, founder of Save Our Scene, said: “This is exactly what The Liveline Fund was created for – to bring ambitious, nationwide tours back to life. Once a staple of the live music scene, these kinds of 20 date runs have become almost impossible due to soaring costs. Liveline is here to change that — fuelling artists, venues and promoters across the country, especially in places that have been overlooked for too long.”