Australian Singer-Songwriter Mick Thomas To Open New Melbourne Music Venue

Following on from yesterday’s news that the site of Melbourne’s Phoenix Public House was re-opening as a brand new live music venue, curiously titled The Jewell [sic] Of Brunswick Hotel, another live music venue is preparing to open in Melbourne’s northern suburb of Abbotsford with thanks to a popular Australian singer-songwriter.

As The Music reports, Mick Thomas, frontman of recent EG Hall of Fame inductees Weddings Parties Anything will be opening the Yarra Hotel in February, and the solo artist has promised that live music is set to be an essential part of the venue.

The first live show at the 150 capacity venue is booked for Friday 8 February, featuring Canadian artist Ron Hawkins – a close friend of the Weddoes frontman – and Ramblin’ Van Walker Band, with tickets on sale now from Mick Thomas’ website.. The gig will double as an opening party for the new live music venue and to test the new set-up before the hotel officially opens later in the month.

“We’ll have some gigs in February, and it will be running as a pub by the end of February,” says Thomas. “Music’s a really big part of [our plans],” he tells The Music, “it’s very much a pub with music, rather than a music venue… In Sydney the Hopetoun was a venue, but it was a really good pub as well.”

“You never thought ‘What are we going to do until the band’s on’?” continues Thomas, adding that the Yarra Hotel “has got to be a pub, where people walk in and think straight away see that it’s got its own shtick.”“We’ll have some gigs in February, and it will be running as a pub by the end of February.” – Mick Thomas

The musician is a part owner of the pub in a team of five that includes Greg ‘Clanger’ Kleynjans, who helped out sprucing up Adelaide’s The Grace Emily, and recently installed the new stage and PA system at the Yarra. “A pretty standard 16 channel modern, reasonably crunchy PA,” describes Thomas, reasoning it “should be enough” for their purposes.

“We can’t have too many good gigs,” says Thomas of the venue’s addition to the live music scene, “that’s what we’re counting on. There’s a lot of good bar gigs in Melbourne, we think we can do a really good job of it.”

Thomas also hinted that they’d allow the 150 capacity sized room open for larger touring bands to play smaller, more intimate shows at the venue.

It’s the latest in a stringe of new venues that have popped up in the north in Melbourne recently. Aside from the aforementioned The Jewell Of Brunswick Hotel in Sydney road, there’s the equally eccentrically named 300 capacity band room just down the road, the Rare And Reclusive, Oft Neglected, Lesser Spotted Mallard, or simply Spotted Mallard for short (as opposed to the acronym RARONLSM.

Meanwhile over in Fitzroy, The Rochester kick-started a new 150 capacity upstairs band room, and a club named Level 2 opened just up the road from The Northcote Social Club.