The Steamhouse Rock Night - History
The Steamhouse night was started in 1988 at a pub in Southborne, Boscombe on a Sunday night called The Malt & Hops/SteamHouse Café. The night at the Steamhouse Pub really established itself in 1990 attracting people from over 30-40 miles away every Sunday night which prompted the decision by Management to have another night on the Monday night, this one being s
lightly more subdued, which was an instant hit, being full up from the very first night and again playing rock music but of a more subtle
Over these years we had grown so large and had become noticed by the music industry and were lucky enough to have a guest appearance from the rock band Magnum who were riding high on success at that time and I was then asked to DJ at a Little Angels concert in Southampton which we knew would also attract a large number of the regulars. By this time the night had surpassed any expectations and had outgrown its current location when an offer came in for me to move the night to a much larger place and to become the Entertainments manager of a nightclub called the Academy just up the road. This club lent itself to the whole idea of the Steamhouse in their smaller club upstairs which held 650 people. On the opening night over 1000 people clocked through the door. This move also meant the launch of the biggest Rock night in the south in the main nightclub, capacity 2000, on a Friday night, again the opening night was sold out with in excess of 200 people turning up to watch AB/CD perform and me play music with that legendary style that I was known for. Because the club was known for live music in the past, it meant that I could book artists such as Magnum, FM, Brand New Heavies, Jools Holland and a number of other artists, building on my link to the larger music business on each occasion. The club was sold after a year and the new owners wanted to take the club in a different direction. This ended a run of just less than 10 years of having the most enjoyable time of my career, and I decided to finally put to bed the Steamhouse for ever. Steamhouse Rock Nights - The Reunion
We did our first Steamhouse Rock Nights Reunion night at a club called The Anvil, Bournemouth in 2011 which was a sell out and after a few more reunion nights there we moved the Steamhouse nights to a bar called The Inferno in 2013 to start a monthly Friday night residency. In 2017 we moved back to our "spiritual home" in Southbourne which was now called The Brewhouse and Kitchen and was now even larger due the owners knocking the venue through, which meant there was a capacity of 600+. The idea being that we would work 3 Bank Holiday Sundays a year which have proved to be very successful attracting in excess of 6-700 people on every night we have put on, making us now ticket the night to guarantee entry. We have continued putting these shows on each year and will continue to do so for the foreseeable future. Steamhouse Rock Nights - The Radio Show
Chesil Radio offered the Steamhouse to present their first ever radio show which was weekly on a Thursday night, which was our introduction to a whole new medium and a to further the brand to capture new listeners and the success was almost immediate which prompted a Bournemouth radio station, Hot Radio to ask me to present on their station as well of which we jumped at the chance as this would be the home town of the brand. We started presenting our weekly Wednesday night show almost immediately. Move forward 18 months and we had left Chesil Radio and Hot Radio to join a Brighton based Rock/Metal radio station, Metal Meyhem Radio to present a bi-weekly Steamhouse show on Mondays. This quickly got replaced by weekly Thursday and Friday night shows. We now only present our weekly Thursday and Friday night shows for Metal Meyhem Radio.
