A soul and Motown extravaganza at Hull City Hall has sparked a spin-off festival which licensee Danny Murray hopes will boost business at his three city centre bars.

Danny has been running pubs in Hull since 1998 and has seen for himself that the city is full of soul survivors – even though he wasn’t born when the likes of The Supremes, The Four Tops and Stevie Wonder were topping the charts.

The main event at Hull City Hall on Saturday 14 September will run from 9pm until 3am and feature DJs from across the country who are bringing big reputations for playing the dance floor hits from Northern Soul and Tamla Motown.
To cater for local fans and an expected influx of Tamla tourists from all over the country Danny has devised a Soul Fest weekend which will see live shows at Moderation, Diva and the New King Edward.

Danny said: “There are specialist DJs coming to the City Hall from Wigan, Blackpool, Stoke, Whitby and many other towns and cities and we expect them to bring a lot of visitors with them from outside our area.

“That presents a big opportunity for us to get a few more people through our doors so we decided to organise a Soul Fest in the three bars that we run.”

The Soul Fest programme will take place on the Friday and Saturday nights and will feature local singers including Damian Balthazar, Dylan James, Ricky Lennon and Little Jen as well as local DJs.

Danny added: “I got into soul by listening to the music my mum plays, and now we play it in our bars because a lot of the customers enjoy it. So Soul Fest is for them and for the people coming to Hull for the City Hall event.

“It’s not easy running a bar these days and it’s important to keep coming up with new ideas that will attract people in. As soon as we heard about the night at the City Hall we saw it as an opportunity.”