Max HeyraudThe Drogheda Groove Movement is a club night dedicated to breeding life into Drogheda’s dwindling club scene through grassroots collaboration, free parties and community building. Jordan Bohan and Jake Moran co-founded DGM to create a sustainable club culture, breaking down barriers, and fostering a thriving space for the culture to grow.
Drogheda’s nightlife has faced numerous challenges in recent years, putting the town’s once-thriving club culture in jeopardy. Jordan Bohan sees the decline as a call to action. Bohan, the founder of DGM, is on a mission to rejuvenate Drogheda’s nightlife scene. Drawing on his years of experience, he is working to bring new ideas and grassroots-driven events to the town, with the goal of creating a sustainable club ecosystem.
Bohan explains. “Over the years, I’ve seen both positive and negative changes, but recently, we’ve found ourselves in possibly the most uncertain and challenging position yet. Seeing Drogheda’s nightlife gradually decline is what motivated me to try something different to help save our scene. That’s where the idea for DGM came from.”
We caught up with the team to discuss the challenges of running club nights in Drogheda and their unwavering devotion to revitalizing the local nightlife scene.
What inspired you to start hosting free parties in underused or entirely unused venues in Drogheda?
Drogheda has always had a small scene throughout the years with multiple collectives popping up and disappearing with time. We were heading in a great direction prior to Covid with big shows and larger audience numbers across the board but it hasn’t been the same since. Due to the prevalence of social media, I found crowds’ attention spans have damaged DJ sets massively and a lot of the music played in clubs in Drogheda tends to be whatever the trend is at the time to try to keep attendance higher. In turn, this creates stale and stagnant club nights after a couple of months.
We want to bring some sort of underground feel back to Drogheda by hosting events which don’t follow trends, giving DJs an opportunity to express their creativity and play sets they truly enjoy. At the same time, we want to try to help out as many venues as possible to survive in the ever-growing difficult nightlife industry we have in Ireland by bringing in business and creating an evolving nightlife landscape.
I personally believe Drogheda can have a thriving scene which can hold its own against larger scenes in Ireland. We just need to break down some barriers and mindsets to achieve this goal.
How has the local community responded to these events so far?
With Drogheda Groove Movement we have built up a community of DJs, Promoters, Producers, Videographers and Graphic Designers with the intent to give everyone a voice and an opportunity to be a part of something that can’t be done alone. We are constantly growing with approximately 70 members all from around the Drogheda area. Outside of this, we have been getting a lot of positive feedback from punters and people who don’t tend to go out much in Drogheda as well as seeing recurring faces at gigs which is great too.
We have also been working closely with Drogheda’s nighttime advisor discussing many of the strengths and weaknesses of the town he has given us a lot of support and is helping to push our agenda in local government offices. A key example of this is the pop-up street party which we held in collaboration with Bigmoon Records & Lu of Light Festival back in early November.
What challenges have you faced when running shows in Drogheda?
A lot of pubs and venues are struggling in Drogheda at the minute, average footfall is down massively in comparison to previous years. Last year a new space opened called ‘The Cellar’, This venue lasted less than 6 months and it had only seen 2 shows both of them were sellouts, a techno gig hosted by ‘We R Ravers’ and its last event hosted by Mood & Aurora with Sunil Sharpe. This space would have been something special for our scene as it was historically a great music venue dating back to the 80’s and was a brief insight into what Drogheda could be outside of the clubs. We are now facing losing potentially two more great venue spaces which we have been using the last 3 months which is going to damage our ability to host free parties across the town.
Another problem we are facing is in relation to expectations with the younger crowds. Young punters expect to walk into a gig which has only opened doors and are expecting the venue to be near capacity. I’ve personally witnessed groups walk into venues that are 100 capacity, seeing 20-30 people at 8:30 and leaving straight away without giving the event a chance because “it’s too quiet”. In reality with our free parties we aren’t aiming or expecting to sell out venues, we just want to bring consistent great gigs whether that is with 80 people or 15. Filling a 100-capacity venue in a town like Drogheda is a tough task, made easier by doing less consistent gigs with bigger build-ups for promotion but this model is starting to fade in reliability too.
To be honest there are more problems than positives when it comes to running nights in small towns but consistency and perseverance is the only way to push things forward.
Have you noticed any changes in how venue managers or other local stakeholders view these underutilised spaces since you began hosting events?
We have been contacted by different venues in the town since starting DGM offering us regular shows as well as venues we have been working out of looking to include us in some of their bigger plans for 2025. There was also another venue that had seen the footfall we have been bringing into a nearby venue room (Only previously used for Parties and Karaoke nights) and seeing our success in that venue they have launched their own Techno nights which they plan to do multiple times a year and have gotten us involved in the process to help out with the running of their nights and for promo support. Which is very positive from our point of view as it shows venue managers are noticing what we are doing and want to apply it to their own spaces which is partially the whole point of starting DGM.
A venue we worked with included a special DGM Cocktail on our nights for €7 which was a top seller that night and now other venues we are working with are following suit with similar promotions.
We have also been contacted by collectives in nearby towns who are in a similar or worse position than Drogheda is and we plan to work with these groups in their towns to push their nightlife forward with collaborative gigs and help them establish their own form of DGM.
What advice would you give to others who might want to start similar projects in their own towns or cities?
I would start off by bringing the idea to a couple of other like-minded collectives or individuals in their town. Create a group chat, Meet up for discussions, build a strong core team with the same goals in mind and start launching some free parties. From the current state of the country, pubs and venues are more than happy to let a free party go ahead as it will bring in more business for them with no extra overheads or risks. Build up relationships with venue managers across your town and keep going. There are going to be good nights and more than likely a lot of bad nights in the beginning but don’t let it discourage or undermine the end goal of bringing back the scene to your town. If anyone wants more specific advice on anything our DMs are always open and we want to help anyone who needs it.
Are there any specific venues or spaces you’re particularly excited about using for future events?
We held an event in mid-November in a space previously only used for parties and a couple of band / indie gigs. We had attracted a fairly decent crowd and had a great night. We planned to use this venue as a core venue for 2025 but only last week we were made aware that this venue will be closing its doors at the end of January. We have jumped at the opportunity to do one more show here on the 24th of January although January is the worst time of year to host a gig. This news was a real blow to our plans as it ticked all the boxes to be a great asset in rebuilding the scene in Drogheda. This venue may reopen but under new management and they may not be open to the idea of having “Rave” music in their venue as the current reputation of dance music in Drogheda isn’t great.
We will be operating in more venues in Drogheda in 2025 and we aim to bring a unique buzz to each one, working with different individuals and collectives, having different genres taking centre stage as well as adding our own touch to different spaces in terms of sound, lighting and props.
We’re looking forward to the summer months so we can hold some more pop-up outdoor gigs across the town after the success of our first one.
What impact do you hope these parties will have on club culture in Drogheda over the long term?
Our aim with doing these free parties in pubs and venues is to hopefully encourage more footfall across the town, with the end goal being thriving scenes with weekly great shows hosted by DGM and other great collectives in the town such as Mood, Aurora, Verwalten, Quasi, AAA Collective, Legion of Boom, We R Raverz, Unlocked, Reboot, Our Motion, Club Generation and many more.
Having venues be more receptive to electronic music nights to eliminate the stigma associated with electronic music in small towns.
For a small town, we hold our weight when it comes to talent but lack the spaces and overall numbers to have a reliable and consistent scene. By hosting free parties we hope to get more people out on the town and show that you don’t need to wait for a festival, go to Dublin/Belfast or travel abroad to hear some great artists playing some great music.
We hope what we are doing in Drogheda, if successful, will be replicated across the country to improve Ireland’s nightlife as a whole.
All images with thanks to Dewa Davies
