The takeover, announced on Monday, gives Brackenline Records a 68% stake in the Smithfield venue and creates a new company combining the label, booking operation and hall. Songwriter and producer Gabriel L. Ondrišová, a co-founder of Brackenline, said the deal would protect a room where emerging Irish acts can play without giving up control of their work.
“We used to arrive here with a van, a borrowed keyboard and no idea if the door money would cover the petrol,” Ondrišová said in an interview at the venue on Tuesday. “Now we get to decide what this room is for.” Brackenline’s artists and staff will hold the controlling share; Morrow’s existing owners will retain 32%.
Artists take the keys
The new group has valued the business at €6.4 million and set aside €1.3 million for repairs, sound equipment and a battery system. Its first commitment is to keep all 22 venue and booking staff, while the label’s roster of 11 acts will receive priority access to rehearsal space and a share of ticket income from selected nights.
Ondrišová remembers playing to 19 people at Morrow Rooms in 2012, before a later tour brought the songwriter’s work to larger halls around Ireland. “There was a woman at the front who knew every word, and I thought, this is enough to build from,” they said. The deal, they added, turns that early welcome into “a place we can offer back”.
We used to arrive here with a van, a borrowed keyboard and no idea if the door money would cover the petrol.
Gabriel L. Ondrišová, songwriter and producer
Power priced by the hour
A central part of the plan is a 420-kilowatt-hour battery and a contract that charges the venue according to hourly electricity prices. The system can store power when rates are lower and supply it during expensive evening periods, when lights, ventilation and sound equipment are running together.
Renée Hébert-Couture, Morrow Rooms’ general manager, said the venue’s annual electricity bill was about €410,000. The owners estimate that shifting use and charging the battery at cheaper hours could reduce that bill by 31% once the system is fully operating in spring. “We can’t ask a crowd to come at 14:00 because electricity is cheaper then,” she said. “We can move the energy, not the show.”
The approach takes a pricing model available to Irish households with smart meters and applies it to a business with a more predictable heavy-use window. Hébert-Couture said many households understandably balk at tracking changing rates through the day; the venue will automate the shifts and publish its monthly savings alongside ticket accounts.
Yusuf Omowale, an energy consultant hired by the new company, said the battery would not remove exposure to price spikes. His team has modelled a 15% increase in annual power costs under a severe-price scenario, even with the equipment. “This is a useful hedge, not a magic box,” he said. The company will review the contract after its first full winter.
For artists, the financial change could be as important as the stage. Brackenline plans to publish quarterly accounts showing ticket income, venue costs and the share paid to performers, a level of detail that is unusual for small independent halls. The first report is due in April 2027.
Morrow Rooms is scheduled to host its first Brackenline-curated bill on 6 February, with the group promising a mix of established acts and first-time performers. Ondrišová said the new owners had not bought the venue to make it exclusive to their roster: “If the room works, it should make space for the next band that hasn’t got a plan yet.”
