Mikey Cahill: Welcome back Espy, you’ve been missed
As the Esplanade Hotel reopens after three years, music fans can give thanks that the natural order has finally been restored, writes Mikey Cahill.
Opinion
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Has it really been three years since The Espy closed? It feels like a long time ago in a galaxy far, far away. That’s because St Kilda’s Esplanade Hotel was one of the last bastions of bohemia in postcode 3182.
You could walk along Fitzroy St and feel a bit crestfallen due to the gentrification and the $14 glasses of prosecco but only 80m away stood The Espy.
On the right was the sublime view of the beach and coastline but from the Espy came the thud of a drum kit, the cacophony of a guitar, bass and vocals and the chatter of people catching up and falling in love with new bands — and sometimes each other.
ESPY’S SLICK NEW INTERIOR REVEALED AHEAD OF OPENING
I believe it was St Kilda stalwart Paul Kelly who said The Espy had the best sunset of any pub in Victoria. And as surely as the great yellow orb rises each morning, it submerges into Port Phillip Bay each evening, soaking the horizon with vivid purple and pink hues.
“She’s got good bones,” former owner Vince Sofo told me at The Espy’s 130th birthday lunch a decade ago. Molly Meldrum got up and did an impromptu and heartfelt speech about how his parents took him there to see music as a kid; how it had changed the way he thought about life and had given him his love for concerts.
That night, we went downstairs and watched a white-suited Tex Perkins and the Ladyboyz play soft rock covers of Hungry Eyes by Eric Carmen and Lionel Richie’s Three Times a Lady. It was a scene.
The diversity of music has always been the sharpest arrow in The Espy’s quiver. Think RocKwiz and you think The Gershwin Room with Julia Zemiro riffing with the crowd while the RocKwiz Orchestra riffed with the special guest, Brian Nankervis’s Luna Park smile lit up the room and “human scoreboard” Dugald’s arms waved akimbo.
Hip hop icons Public Enemy once came on at 2.45am, three hours past their scheduled time and still rocked the joint. US metalcore group Dillinger Escape Plan launched into their set in 2006, and both singer and guitarist crowd-surfed multiple times during the first song.
I remember seeing Bat Boys Batucada playing Latino percussion mid-St Kilda Festival as if it were Wembley Stadium. And older heads recall folkloric Aussie acts such as Zydeco Jump who would pack the place out Saturday afternoon and rip through Cajun-flavoured party songs.
When new owners Sand Hill Road said they were going to restore The Espy to its former glory, I’m sure you were as sceptical as I was. With real estate developers keen to build apartments on the prime land, many thought The Espy was done for.
But so far so good. The revamped, retooled, revived Espy has three live music stages, 12 bars and two restaurants with 60 chefs chanting ready, steady, cook.
They’re on trend with a glass retractable ceiling that nods to its rich history. Cleverly, they have a podcast studio any member of the public can book.
And they’ve tapped Shaun Adams to program the music after he flexed as band booker at Karova Lounge in Ballarat.
The grand old dame of St Kilda can help defibrillate St Kilda’s live music scene. It’s both cyclic and natural for things to change and energies to shift around Melbourne. Northside venues The Curtin Bandroom, Howler, Northcote Social Club, The Yarra Hotel, The Croxton Bandroom, The Gasometer and Rubix Warehouse have dragged crowds away from the coastal pocket.
The double loss of The Espy and Pure Pop Courtyard really hurt. But now there’s hope. MEMO Music Hall is holding its own, the 2000-capacity refurbished Palais Theatre is a vision inside and out and the Prince Hotel (formerly Prince of Wales) is picking up momentum.
THE Prince Hotel group’s general manager, Reg Lodewyke, said: “I don’t think St Kilda has changed too much over the last five to 10 years, which is probably what the issue is.” That’s why we need the 1700-capacity Esplanade Hotel to provide the honey pot.
“The Espy has always been our ultimate pub dream. But it’s also an awesome responsibility,” says Doug Maskiell, co-founder of Sand Hill Road. “Uneasy lies the head that wears a crown” goes the often misquoted line from Shakespeare’s Henry IV. Not if you have your head screwed on correctly.
Maskiell and his merry men will do a fine job.
If you’re reading this and salivating at the prospect of watching that sunset with a frothy then ducking inside to see live music, you’ll drool when I tell you who they have lined up: the Teskey Brothers, Dan Sultan, The Chats, Her Sound Her Story, PP Arnold and The RocKwiz Orchestra, Tex Perkins and Matt Walker will all play before the end of the year.
It’s over to you to show The Espy how much you’ve missed her by voting with your feet and rattling those bones.
Welcome back.
Mikey Cahill is a Herald Sun lifestyle journalist
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