“We were operating with stripped-back gigs and a late bar with a few events – such as having a clubnight with a DJ that our customers know and love, but with a bar setting and table service and late-night events on until 3am. We’ve heavily invested in an app and have other COVID security measures put in place.”

With shows from a number of Sheffield’s best local bands, I am Kloot’s John Bramwell and a comedy set from Russell Kane, the Leadmill was rebuilding a promising calendar. However, Walker was less than enthused about the new curfew – arguing that it had wiped out “about 90 percent” of their revenue stream.

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“This curfew measure comes in halfway through Freshers’ Week,” she said. “Last Freshers’ Week, we had about 2,000 customers per night on Thursday, Friday and Saturday. This year, we have reduced that to 280 customers per night. We needed two events to happen to make them possible, and the government have basically cut them in half by taking away our late night, late-night event.”

She continued: “In terms of live music and comedy events, although it is great, there aren’t many of them. We’re trying to get some acts to do stripped-back events, but many of them don’t want to do that sort of thing and some are finding it difficult to get together and rehearse at the moment, and the limits on capacity limits the amount of income we can take. That directly impacts the money we can pay the band which they then pay to their management, their agent, their crew, their engineer.

“It’s just not financially viable for musicians to tour at the moment we can only put on a handful of gigs. The bulk of our income stream was from these late bar events. They have an income to our regular DJs and self-employed contractors that have fallen through the net of the government’s financial assistance so far. That’s been once again stripped away.”

Walker said that the venue would be trialling events earlier in the day and evening, but didn’t have much faith in their longevity.

“We’re still hanging on to the hope that we’ll receive COVID cultural recovery money through the Arts Council, and we should be hearing back towards the end of the month. That isn’t a given. The places that tend to get that Arts Council funding tend to already be in the circle. We are not funded by any bodies. We’re an independent limited company who depend entirely on our own revenue. We hope they see that we’re a company worth investing in and saving. Right now we’re working with the Music Venue Trust for a way to find financial assistance.

“We’re already moving our Spring 2021 shows into Winter 2021. Even if we can open up at the end of these six months, we’re still not going to have the amount of live events that Sheffield is used to until this time next year.”

Last month, meanwhile, The Leadmill shared their gratitude after Arctic Monkeys raised over £100,000 towards the venue’s survival through a charity raffle of frontman Alex Turner’s guitar.

You went from playing songs you’d help write in sold out arenas, to playing dive bars in secret. Was that a shock to the system?

“I definitely had that dream experience of playing stadiums full of people, but I’ve been on stage in front of 20,000 people and I felt completely alone. And I’ve been in a room of 12 people playing these songs with my band and there’s no comparison. I wouldn’t trade it for the world. I would much rather be in a room halfway filled with a couple dozen people that really care about what it is that we’re doing than a stadium full of people that couldn’t care less if I was there or not.”

It must have been scary leaving Panic! for something unknown?

“There’s a line on ‘Leave Me Alone’ which is ‘They say the devil that you know is better then the devil that you don’t.’ It’s an old cliché but in my experience, it’s really not true. People tend to fear the things that are unknown, so sometimes they stay in a situation that’s not necessarily the best for them. Being in this band is a lot better for me. It’s a healthier environment. I can be creative without filters, without rules and with nothing standing between what I write and the finished product.”

What’s the track ‘Razzmatazz’ about?

“Like most of the album and our ‘1981 Extended Play’, there’s a lot about disillusionment with the culture of the entertainment business as well as feeling alone and angry in the middle of Hollywood. It’s definitely not my kind of town. Orbiting that world of fame, money and celebrity just made me really aware of the kind of life I wanted. For better or for worse, a lot of artists do treat art like a product to be manufactured these days. They build careers, make millions of dollars and become huge celebrities and that’s wonderful if that’s what your goals are, but I could never bring myself to treat art like that. For this track, I was able to take a step back from everything else we’d written and sum it all up. It’s a statement track and our closing argument.”

There are two versions of IDK – the one we’re speaking to now and that we see on stage, and then there’s the one from the past. What inspired that?

“David Bowie did it with Ziggy Stardust, The Beatles did it with Sgt. Pepper and I remember being really enamoured with those fictional storylines. It was really fun to dive into those worlds. It’s a soft conceptualisation, we don’t lean to hard into it and we’re not playing characters because I want the songs to be able to exist on their own but for those diehards that like to have something more, I wanted to give them another layer of entertainment. I doubt we’ll do it forever because I don’t want to just do one thing. As Bowie said, never play to the gallery.”

Has it been comforting to have the world of iDKHOW to escape into at a time like this?

“Music has always been escapism for me and right now, we’re living in chaos. With this pandemic, there’s this constant aura of paranoia and stress that surrounds you all the time. If you can’t escape from that, it starts to build until you hit a breaking point. Music provides that three-minute window of escape. It’s important to have moments like that so that you can get back into the world and continue to do what you can to improve it. The Black Lives Matter movement is hugely important and there are vital voting initiatives taking place across America but music as escapism is an important therapy. I hope that what we’re doing can provide that moment of escape for anyone else that needs it.”

Despite the nostalgia you’ve already shared festival stages with the likes of Billie Eilish and Twenty One Pilots. Do you feel like you fit in with that world?

“No, but that’s always been the case. I am definitely used to that feeling of being amongst a certain group of people but not really being part of them. And that’s not my intention. I would definitely love to be as successful as any of those acts but I think the nature of my inspirations (Marc Bolan, Sparks, David Bowie, Ben Folds Five) and the things that I like might be dooming us to obscurity forever. But if that’s the case, so be it. At least we did it our way.”

I Dont Know How But They Found Me release debut album ‘Razzmatazz’ on October 16.