Regulars at the Brudenell Social Club in Leeds have all sorts of favourite memories of the venue. For some, it is the night Thee Oh Sees played in the games room and had people dancing on the pool tables. For Lyndsay “Lins” Wilson – who used to live opposite and wheeled her amplifier over to play in bands such as Grammatics and Mother Vulpine – it is the time that the Israeli punks Monotonix “set fire to the drum kit, wrapped the drummer up in a rug and carried him outside on a stool while the audience formed a conga line around the car park”. Licensee and promoter Nathan Clark laughs as he recalls how a cab driver once got onstage during a gig and grabbed the microphone to yell: “Taxi for Cooper!”

The 107-year old venue encourages colourful things to happen. To walk through the old wooden doors of this innocuous looking concrete building is to enter a Tardis. It reveals two 400-capacity live rooms (one an amphitheatre shape, the second – square – added recently), a games room laden with historic plaques of former club presidents and a bustling bar that reflects its origins as a working men’s club. Johnny Marr calls it a “special place”. Evening drinker Martin Trippet, 59, who has been coming here for 20 years, describes the “Brude” as “the best local in the world. Where else can you come for a few pints after work, and walk into another room and see Sebadoh?”

Facebook Twitter Pinterest Nathan Clark, owner of the Brudenell Social Club. Photograph: Richard Saker/The Observer

Grassroots venues such as this are the lifeblood of UK music, connecting established names with audiences and nurturing talent. Everyone from Franz Ferdinand to Grimes has played the Brude on the way up. And yet, these venues are under threat. In the past decade, 35% have been lost, which Arts Council music director, Clair Mera-Nelson, puts down to a “perfect storm” of issues such as the smoking ban, increases in parking charges, poor transport links, rocketing rent and rates, and changes to alcohol consumption, which for some venues “can be the final nail in the coffin”. The Arts Council has launched a £1.5m scheme to support the sector, while the government has announced it will cut venues’ business rates by 50%. This will save each venue an average of £7,500 a year, which “could be the difference between staying open and closing” for some, says the Brudenell’s Clark.

In mid-February, I spend a few days watching the comings and goings at the Brudenell. It is a in a stronger position than many. It is a nonprofit enterprise, with any surplus cash reinvested into such things as the topnotch sound system. Crucially, the club owns the building and land so “there’s no rent and no nasty landlord”, says Clark. Its LS6 location – a bus ride from the city centre – means it avoids higher rates and lies in an area densely populated with students and young people.

“The Brudenell’s part of the reason I moved to Leeds,” says Sarah Statham, 32, who has never lived more than a 10-minute walk away since relocating from Manchester in 2007. She has played the Brude 34 times in bands such as Esper Scout and Fig By Four. She has met friends and partners here and was approached to form the indie-folk act Crake when she was here playing Flaming Lips songs wearing a bear costume. “There’s something very community-spirited about the hybrid of 18-year-old students and 70-year-old people who’ve never left Leeds,” she says, sitting in the snug area by the games room. “It’s a comfortable place to be for a lot of diverse people.”

Facebook Twitter Pinterest Musician Sarah Statham, who has played the Brudenell 34 times. Photograph: Richard Saker/The Observer

Clark sees his venue as “first and foremost” a community hub, and staff and punters alike make unusually personal connections with the place. Chris Tyrer, who works the door, courted his wife here. The couple had their wedding reception in the club free of charge as their “wedding present”. When Statham was unable to insure her van, Clark let her park it on the premises for a year. He mentions a recent incident when a regular texted him from the bar on a Saturday to complain about a new slimline tonic. “I said, ‘OK, we won’t buy that one again,’” he chuckles. “What other place could people message like that and know that they’re being listened to?”

Few modern venues have a licensee who also promotes. Clark stages 75% of the gigs, along with some in other venues, and lives (staff say frugally) above the venue. Clark’s day can begins as early as 6am if there is a beer delivery and continues after he locks up (as late as 2.30am at weekends). The 39-year old sees running the social club, established in 1913, as “a lifestyle, not a job” and must barely have time for sleep. As Wilson asks him one night in the newer live room’s dressing room: “Nathan, how are you still alive?”

My father had put so much work into this, so there was a desire to not let someone else come along and wreck it Nathan Clark

Clark grew up in the terraces behind the Brudenell. One of his earliest memories, aged seven, is of kicking a football around at the Rock Against Racism all-dayer at the adjoining Royal Park pub while bands played on an outdoor stage. “Growing up I saw a lot of punk bands, weird stuff,” he says one afternoon, seated in what will later become the merch area. “People with different hairstyles and clothing became the norm and everyone was in a band so in the next street I’d hear guitars. You just don’t get that in most streets in the UK.” His builder father loved nights in the Brudenell and, in 1992, when the declining social club faced a potentially terminal tax bill, he paid the debt off and changed career to run the place (“He felt ownership and cared about it”). In 1995, when riots erupted and the nearby Newlands pub was burned down, the Brudenell hosted the planning meetings for Hyde Park Unity Day, a free outdoor gig (now in its 24th year) that brought the community together. Gradually, the venue’s entertainment focus shifted from comedy to the DIY scene. “My father was very open to letting people use the space,” Clark says. “It was never: ‘That’s a fucking racket.’ It was a blank canvas for everything from Termite noise club to weird art projects.”

By the late 90s, Clark was following his other lifelong passion – football – as a trainee at Sheffield Wednesday before landing a professional contract in the US with MLS side Portland Timbers. Then came the bombshell news that his father was dying with lymphoma. “He’d put so much work into this,” Clark sighs. “So there was a desire to not let someone else come along and wreck it.”

After helping his mum run the venue while he was studying for a business degree, Clark took over in 2003. His mum cooked for the bands. Joanna Newsom’s monitor rocked on a beer crate. The Fall’s first dressing room consisted of a sofa in the kitchen. When the venue was teetering over the cost of mandated soundproof fire doors, the community rallied to raise the money. “Competitions. Gigs. We even did a musical Bullseye one night,” Clark recalls. “But every penny counted.”

Facebook Twitter Pinterest Chris Tyrer, doorman at the Brudenell Social Club. Photograph: Richard Saker/The Observer

He has repaid that loyalty by building relationships with artists, many of whom return time and time again. Still, Clark does not play favourites: “Lee ‘Scratch’ Perry will be treated the same as [Leeds band] Cowtown,” he says. Bands sell merch and fans can talk to them afterwards, rather then be chucked out, building “lasting connections”. Drummer Jim Sclavunos – here this Tuesday playing with the singer-songwriter Joe Gideon but usually seen in Nick Cave and the Bad Seeds, who play Leeds First Direct arena shortly – has noticed. “People will help carrying your stuff or hold a door open. Something simple makes all the difference to a tired band,” he says.

Clark thinks the venue may put on more gigs than any other in the UK – as many as six bands a night. Artists are often greeted by the main house soundman, Trevor Baines, 53, who spent years in tribute bands and understands “what bands have been through to get to that place where they might be grumpy with you,” he says. “You have to be patient with people, but most are not off their face on drink on drugs. They’re nice.” Baines has mixed the sound here for 17 years and admits to “long days” but unexpected rewards: “You might get to see Thurston Moore pay guitar with spoons, which I’d never get in an arena.”

Other staff are similarly loyal. The bubbly Liverpudlian operations manager, Jilly Chatten, 32, moved to Leeds for the music scene. She started working here in 2013 and does everything from “financial planning to collecting glasses”. She will work 60 hours a week, attend gigs on nights off and describes Clark as “a humble man who wants to give something to the community. It drives my husband [Pete Flitten, a touring sound engineer who occasionally mixes at the Brudenell] mad,” she chuckles. “We came to a gig recently and he frowned at me because I kept sloping off and collecting glasses. But it’s not a workplace. It’s a way of life.” Both Baines and Chatten talk to me in a tiny room behind the bar, where walls of CCTV televisions monitor every inch of the venue, a reminder that behind the cuddly image lies an efficient operation.

Facebook Twitter Pinterest ‘Tango, Bosnian style!’: Dubioza Kolektiv. Photograph: Richard Saker/The Observer

Bands from Liars to Nightmares on Wax have shot album covers here and the bigger recent Leeds bands – Hookworms, Eagulls et al – emerged after playing the Brudenell. Meanwhile, it hosts everything from children’s concerts (with quieter sound and heightened lighting) to televised football and even giant games of Risk. Over three nights in the club (the first, unusually, has no gig, but the bar is still very busy), I watch Joe Gideon do a free gig, Rochdale singer-songwriter Kirk McElhinney and Dubioza Kolektiv, a surreal Bosnian version of Madness, whose rave-ska and wild-eyed instructions on “how to tango, Bosnian-style” bring the house down.

Clark knows what is right for the venue (“Music we think is great or we think people should be listening to”) and otherwise. When an outside promoter wanted to use search dogs outside a drill gig, he told them, “We’re not that kind of venue” and the gig was moved. Clark booked one of this week’s turns – Laurence Fox – before the actor-singer’s infamous Question Time appearance. He is fearing protests, but admits that cancelling could have led to legal action over the fee and possibly defamation. “So we thought the best thing would be to just let the gig take place to 50 people or whatever.” Which is precisely what happens.

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Prior to locking up for another night, Clark admits that sustaining the Brudenell can be a burden and that he is already making plans to future-proof the venue from developers. He does have some days off (“for Leeds United matches”) but with no children and “no ties”, the venue is his life. Could the 39-year old ever contemplate doing something else? “I don’t like to think about it,” he admits, “but it’s not: ‘What am I getting out of this?’ It’s about building memories and bringing people together for more than a night out. There are people coming here and working here who’ve made bonds for life. That’s rewarding. I like to think we do some good.”