Edinburgh will welcome a brand new music venue later this month, with the arrival of Shout!
Gig-goers will no doubt be familiar with Shout! The Scottish Music Experience, who had a significant stint on the rooftop at the Waverley Mall.
They've now found a more permanent home in Holyrood, a 150-200 capacity venue hosting concerts most nights of the week.
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And beyond the music, Shout! will serve as a bar and food spot, with the excellent Exile Cooks taking up residency in the new kitchen.
With a soft launch at the 111A Holyrood Road spot scheduled March 25, we caught up with Shout! General Manager Nadine Urquhart to find out more.
She explained: "The Scottish Music Experience celebrates the contribution Scotland has made to the music industry from the 50s, such as Lonnie Doneghan, 60s, like Lulu, 70s and so on up until the present day.
"We had a unit up at the Waverley Mall, on the rooftop, serving beers and cocktails and we had a joint venture with a pizza company. It was great, we did really well, but we were only there for 17 weeks.
"This new venue is fantastic, It's all very exciting. The stage is built, the bar is built, we're just in the process of getting the graphics up and we have staff.
"It has a capacity of around 150 - 200 and we'll be having gigs there most nights of the week."
And Shout! will be handing over the stage to the latest Scottish talent, while it could possibly also host big names in the country's music scene too.
Nadine added: "We'll be supporting up-and-coming artists too, Scottish, English, Australian and from all over. We have around 30 bookings already for people coming to play.
"We have connections with Lewis Capaldi, Paolo Nutini, we know Danny from The Script too.
"We're involved with Nordoff Robbins, one of the biggest music charities, who have people like Elton John doing gigs for them. They support disabled children too through music therapy. They'll use our venue six to twelve times a year.
"We're also building a small radio station, so we're planning on doing one-on-one interviews with celebrities."
"We've deliberately employed staff with a connection to music, so they can serve the alcohol, serve the food and get up and play or sing too!"
Meanwhile, music fans will also be licking their lips at the prospect of Exile Cooks taking on the new kitchen.
Having made their name for their delicious street food in Glasgow, they arrived in Edinburgh last summer, serving sensational scran from a shipping container at West Tollcross.
And it seems we can expect more of the dishes that have made them so revered on both the east and the west coast.
Speaking to Edinburgh Live, Exile Cooks co-director Martin Connor teased their new menu.
He said: "We'll have a similar cooking style to one we have at our Bauhaus venue in Glasgow, we'll be taking the outside inside as well as doing deliveries.
"We'll have street food served in a traditional street food manner, doing things like hot dogs, buttermilk chicken charcoal bao with char siu jam, we've got a fish and chip butty with lobster sauce going on, we've got a couple of new interesting new dishes as well as some old favourites like our tacos as well.
"So it's very much in keeping with a lot of things we've done at Bauhaus and a couple of the pop-ups we've done as well.
And there will be more similarities between Shout! and where they have kitchen residency in Glasgow too.
Martin added: "Since we've been at Bauhaus we've got the open mic nights started, we've launched the comedy night which my friend runs here in Glasgow too, so it's been good to get some live entertainment on, especially after covid, with the art and hospitality sectors taking a bit of a hit. It's good that we can work together.
"Shout! is obviously doing the live music, but not just that, I believe they'll have poetry, comedy and a bit of everything going on.
"A lot of bands have signed up already, some quite recognised and some up-and-coming bands.
"They've also got their radio station broadcasting from the unit as well."
Having first made inroads to the Edinburgh food scene last year, Martin says he and co-director Paul O'Malley are excited about landing a more permanent base in the capital.
"We've got a unit at West Tollcross, a shipping container unit, which is there as part of a little food spot along with Radge Chaat and Kaptain Karaage. The three of us are there next door together. We're coming up for our second summer now, having started at the tail end of last summer and we did the pop-up at Innis and Gunn's Brewery Taproom on Lothian Road as well.
"Shout! will be our first more permanent residency in Edinburgh.
"It's great for us. I'm very much into my live music and stuff so it will be really good to work alongside the guys and see what's going on and it's really interesting with something different going on each day, I'm really looking forward to it.
"Hopefully it will be well received and I'm sure we'll get off to a busy start."
