The past year has not been easy for the nominees in the Metropolitan Venue Of The Year People's Choice Award stakes, making the honour all the sweeter.
Ask anyone in the live music industry and their answer will be the same: the biggest challenge of the past 12 months has been managing the fallout from COVID. Closed borders, no touring and more uncertainty from the powers that be than can be spun into palatable satire.Nevertheless, 12 metro-area live music venues have been nominated by the public for the People's Choice Award, which will be presented by Oztix and Scenestr as part of the 2022 Queensland Music Awards produced by QMusic.
Find out what the past year has been like for the nominees and how they have managed to survive and maintain throughout one of the darkest periods for the Australian music industry in recent memory.
"Every live music venue would have experienced the same challenges over the past 12 months; with varied restrictions, constantly moving goal posts and unparalleled staff shortages month after month," Daniel Coleman from Lefty's Music Hall says.
"Lefty's has worked within the walls of these challenges, striving to maintain the service and standards for our customers and dedication to keeping the spirit of live music alive. We maintained our live music presence throughout the entire year and supported local musicians."
No one was spared when the borders closed and our beloved live shows looked set to join the endangered species list. Even the region's best-known and well-established venues stood to lose everything.
"Staying resilient through capacity/ patron density restrictions on live music venues, snap lockdowns, border closures impacting interstate travel for bands, smaller percentage of artists we can host, and producing original concepts that aligned with the restrictions on live music venues," The Triffid's Jayde Roxborough says of the past year.
The Tivoli is another Brisbane favourite with a proud history of staging a robust assortment of local, national and international acts. "The forever-changing restrictions means we've had too many reschedules to count," Madison Stevenson from The Tivoli says.
"It's been a year of cancellations, postponements, splitting shows, merging shows back together, reducing capacities then increasing them again.
"The hardest part has been the uncertainty. In 2021 restrictions were introduced then changed the next day, or lockdowns were decided within five hours, meaning everything is up in the air again.
"And then of course we had the vaccine mandate, which throws everything into disarray again. We've tried to adapt where we can, but we won't lie, it's been an absolute slog."
The uncertain conditions led to lengthy delays in opening Princess Theatre, Queensland's oldest standing theatre at 133 years old, lovingly restored as a sister venue for The Tivoli.
"We were meant to open [Princess Theatre] in August last year," Madison adds, "but due to various COVID-related issues we had to push our opening back to October, resulting in three months of lost income and increased expenses. Since opening, we've also had to cancel or reschedule a small number of events due to COVID."
It was also the year that the word 'rescheduled' became the bane of live music fans and venues alike.
"From juggling a calendar of postponements and reschedules along with artist availabilities, border closures and audience confidence, COVID impacts have turned our industry on its head, and we have learnt to be more agile in the face of adversity and uncertainty," Scott McCaig from HOTA says.
"Picking up the phone to cancel shows and impacting the financial certainty of artists was the most heartbreaking and devastating challenge of 2021.
"However, the silver lining and tenacity to find alternatives to present artists again, with a new format or date, proved we as an industry can be flexible to rise to the challenge and to make the gigs happen once again."
Scott Griffin says it was much the same story at Tomcat Bar, as it was over at The Zoo with the added difficulty of having to endure "pushback from the antivaxxer movement", according to The Zoo's spokesperson Luke Johnston.
Australia's live music industry depends on international acts as it does our wealth of homegrown talent. Without major drawcards to fill seats, The Fortitude Music Hall was emptier than some politicians promises.
"We faced massive supply issues for bands as we rely on a large percentage of international content," The Fortitude's Regine Bruce Allen says.
"Capacity restrictions also greatly affected our business and limited the artists we could attract to play.
"However, our team did an incredible job in creating self-produced content such as 'Strings Attached' and 'Spectacular Spectacular' to fill the gaps left by the lack of international talent."
Even when artists managed to book a gig with a venue, it was a crapshoot as to whether or not it would go ahead pending a positive-COVID test that would initiate a lockdown. Each cancellation amounted to more out-of-pocket expenses for the venues.
"The amount of traffic we get in our venue is very much influenced by whether or not we have events booked, so every time we are hit with a booking change without enough time to rebook, we have to open at a loss in order to stay open to our community," Junk Bar's Kaitlin Smalley says.
"We know it's never the artist's fault, during a time where anyone's drummer or anyone's housemate could suddenly be confirmed as a positive case, so we make sure the artists are never out-of-pocket themselves, but it does hit us hard every time.
"The effects that lockdowns have had on our staff as well, just like the staff in every other live music venue across Australia, have been immeasurable."
North, south, east or west, the extended impact of snap lockdowns and ambiguous restrictions is evidenced in the drop in patron confidence, as Kaysei Galea of Studio 188 in Ipswich recounts.
"The ripple effects of COVID have resulted in an unpredictable market and nervous patrons," she says.
"Show viability is really hard to track with patrons buying tickets at the last minute and trying to coax people out of their homes has been a challenge too."
Meanwhile, difficulties for venues nearing the Queensland-New South Wales border were compounded by authoritative responses to ever-emerging hotspots south of the border.
"The biggest challenges were facing the financial stress and possible complete closure of the venue," Kimberley Ferguson from Mo's Desert Clubhouse says.
"There were times where we could only have 48 persons within the venue. Out of 52 weeks of 2021 the venue ran at 20 per cent for 30 weeks, 45 per cent for 20 weeks and was closed for two weeks.
"The viability of running a venue at this capacity is impossible. The overheads were the same, the income was brought down to 15 per cent if not 0 per cent during lockdowns.
"The constant rescheduling, refunding and associated hours upon hours of unpaid COVID-related administrative work was a minefield.
"The continuous change, disappointment, uncertainty from government and stress from the past two years has been, and we believe will be, the hardest challenge that any music venue has had to go through in its lifespan. The financial strain, stress and ageing of the past two years has been horrendous."
Hanna Carruthers from Miami Marketta adds: "Operating a business so close to the Queensland-NSW border has been an added pressure which affected all areas of our business: management, floor and bar staff, foodies, performers, other local businesses and partners we work closely with.
"While it's all been a challenge it has shown us our strength and resilience. We're so proud of what we've been able to achieve during this time and continue doing what we love."
It is that undying spirit to persevere through adversity and continue serving their communities that makes all of this year's nominees worthy of the Metro Venue Of The Year title. To win in 2022 would be a vindication of all they have endured over the past 12 months.
Voting in the 2022 People's Choice Awards – Metro Venue Of The Year / Regional Venue Of The Year / Festival Of The Year – is now open and closes 11:59pm EST 9 March.
The public vote with input from an expert industry panel will decide the winners. Everyone who casts their vote is in the running to win an overnight stay at New Farm's Calile Hotel and a double pass to the 2022 QMAs ceremony. The
2022 Queensland Music Awards will be staged at The Fortitude Music Hall (Brisbane) 29 March.
