Popular Perth live music venue The Aardvark, which is located in the Norfolk Hotel’s basement, has announced that it will close its doors in October due to COVID related restrictions.
Over the years, Spacey Jane, Tame Impala, the Presets and John Butler have all graced the stage, as well as a lot of home grown favourites.
Mark Spillane, who is the director of Bespoke Touring – a company that promotes tours in WA and handles venue bookings for the Aadvark and other live music spaces – said that the venue made the tough decision to close after years of COVID-related restrictions.
“Two years of COVID and just not being able to open or having 50 per cent capacity for a really large portion of that time in a space like The Aardvark that’s 70 people, the margin between profitability and loss is really really thin,” Mr Spillane said.
“So you might have a bigger night and you hope that that night will pay for the nights that are not so big. But when you don’t have the capacity to do that, that really just erases the possibility of that.
“The Norfolk has been supporting live music for 22 years in the space, but I think just two years of that took the wind out of their sails a bit.”
While The Aardvark is closing, the popular and iconic Norfolk hotel will remain open, and the institution is determined to make the last few months of the music venue “fun and awesome”.
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“We’ve been inundated with requests for people to play shows so we are filtering through those and we are hoping to get back some acts that have played over the years and some of our favourites,” Mr Spillane said.
“We’ll have our birthday weekender there as well, which is a two-night party with about 14 bands, and then in October we’re planning our closing party with a special guest act that we can’t announce just yet, but we will go out with a bang.”
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