Success Stories - Musicians
Musician
Arlo Parks
“I did like a few smaller shows at this venue called the Basement Door in Richmond, where a lot of younger kids who were trying to form bands or just starting off in music would be allowed to play. So I played there for a bit. It was mainly open mics. All these kind of little venues and little opportunities really built me up to the position where I could be playing at something like [Brighton multi-venue festival] The Great Escape... it definitely provided the foundations for my life journey”. - Interview from Independent Venue Week 2021.
Arlo was part of The Basement Door in 2017. On 11 May 2021, Parks won the Breakthrough Artist Award at the 2021 Brit Awards. On 9 September, the album Collapsed in Sunbeams won the Hyundai Mercury Prize for Album of the Year. Presenting the award, judge Annie MacManus said: "We chose an artist with a singular voice who uses lyrics of remarkable beauty ... and connects deeply with her generation as she does so".
Musician
Lexie Carroll
Lexi joined The Basement Door when she was 14 years old. Her talent was quickly recognised after she won our 2019 Singer Songwriter competition. By the time she was 18, she had released multiple singles and Eps and has over 40,000 listeners on Spotify. In 2022,
Lexie has fast gained momentum with her latest single releases having won support on Spotify (New Music Friday, Fresh Finds, Our Generation and Lost in the Woods playlists), BBC Introducing and BBC Radio 1's Future Pop.
Lexie sold out a headline gig at The Grace in London and has been supporting Tom Odell, Maddie Zahm, Wasia Project and Tommy LeFroy amongst others.
Musician
Gretel
“When Hänlyn turned 16, she started to gig at places like The Basement Door in Richmond under the name “Maddy Bean”, a pseudonym inspired by Kurt Cobain’s daughter, Francis Bean Cobain. “I very quickly realised that I’ve made a terrible mistake, and literally anything was better than Bean”.
Excerpt from NME interview, 25th January 2022.
The buzz around Gretel’s work has only grown since then. Her debut EP Slugeye has gained her critical acclaim and rave reviews with music critics hailing her as a future icon and song writing great. In 2023, Gretel was on a list put out by the Recording Academy as one of “6 Female-Fronted Acts Reviving Rock”. Gretel was also named as one of the “musical artists set to be big in 2023” by Metro.
Musician
Lydia May
Lydia May joined The Basement Door after she relocated to the UK from Melbourne, Australia with her family. Since then, Lydia has performed at iconic venues such as Glastonbury, Abbey Road studios, The Bedford and The Half Moon, following in the footsteps of other BRIT School alumni.
In 2017 she released her debut demo album “Heart & Soul” and followed up with the EP “Priorities”. Over the past year she has been writing and co-producing her first studio album “Orbit” alongside building a loyal fan base amongst her community.
Musician
Leona Rue
Leona is a St Albans based singer songwriter who joined The Basement Door in 2019.
After spending her final years of study at The Brit School, she is now starting to release and perform her music around London.
Her latest musical creation, ‘Graceful’ embraces the ups and down that are part of growing, it understands that these moments are needed to understand and appreciate not only ourselves but our parents. It has been described as “a refreshingly magical showcase of vulnerability and raw humanity – a contemporary must-listen