Owner Michael Loveridge has constructed a 100-seat “Mersey House Little Theatre” in a section of the facility that previously housed a women’s clothing shop. It includes change rooms for artists. In a side room, a recording studio that is connected to both the pub and theatre has also been installed in partnership with Tim Feswick of Feswick Productions in Broad River. In addition, Loveridge is adding an art gallery and an Internet CafГ© and Fish and Chip shop.

He describes the recording side of the business as, “our winter business. “A lot of it involves overcoming problems with the music industry. The idea is to create a Maritime music web site focusing on Maritime music only.” Staff will record and manufacture live CDs, including the jackets, for sale on the web site, merseyhouse.com. Loveridge adds individual songs can be downloaded as well, but with one important difference.

He explains many download sites only pay an artist about seven cents per song. “It’s a very unfair balance,” Loveridge says. “In this case, the artist can get 30 or 40 cents per download instead of seven cents. The artist wins and the public wins because it bypasses the B.S. in the distribution system.

It’s a very exciting project and enormously supports artists struggling to equip themselves in the modern world.” He expects to record and sell performance videos sometime in the future. He adds they have hosted about 430 concerts over the past two years, which demonstrates the potential, and music-only artists can choose between the theatre and the pub, depending on what atmosphere they prefer. Recordings are starting this week.