Meet the crew crazy enough to open a free live music venue in 2024

It’s Saturday night around midnight at the Punters Club on Brunswick Street, and the joint is jumping. The dance floor is packed, cocktails are clinking and outside there’s a line of people eagerly waiting to slip through the doors.

No, it’s not the late ’90s with Spiderbait, Frente or Magic Dirt pumping out tunes. It was last weekend with jazz quintet the Rookies unleashing frenzied, hip-shaking grooves for the folks inside.

Mark Wilson (left), Matthew Francis and Nathan Farrell run the newly opened Punters Club in Fitzroy.Credit: Simon Schluter

Twenty-two years since the Punters Club closed down, it’s a different live music landscape. Venue operators face a barrage of rising costs, and skyrocketing public liability insurance just to keep the doors open. In challenging economic times, original live music is celebrated.

Nathan Farrell, a co-owner of the re-opened Punters, saw numerous Sydney venues shut before relocating to Melbourne five years ago. While recognising that times have changed, he said honouring the famous Fitzroy pub’s legacy with free live music was a key element to success.

“It’s tricky at the moment, ticket prices are more expensive, and it’s costly for bands to put on shows ... everything is more expensive,” Farrell said. “And what we see in Melbourne is a lot of great acts who feel they can only do a couple of gigs a year.

“Ticketed shows are important, but what we’re trying to do here is connect musicians with fans in a different way, whether that’s a secret show, a residency or a late-night show. It’s about artists growing, and finding new people along the way.”

The Punters Club is back and its new owners promise “fun, positive, upbeat” music and food.Credit: Justin McManus

Unlike the cheap beers, peanuts or chips previously available over the bar, pub food with panache is a major feature of the new Punters Club. Wines, the house Punters Draught and cocktails can also be sipped while relaxing in a booth, before the music cranks up.

“We’re not trying to recreate the place ... this is a 2024 version of the Punters Club,” said co-owner Mark Wilson, also the bass player with Jet.

“The world has changed, peoples’ music tastes and expectations of a night out are different. We had a dream of opening a pub that’s not for anyone in particular. It’s for whoever comes in, a bit like a country pub that’s comfy, warm, a welcoming and inclusive venue.”

Sitting in the legendary band room where he played before joining Jet in 2002, Wilson said “it’s one of those places where you always wanted a gig, a kind of rite of passage.

‘We’re not trying to recreate the place ... this is a 2024 version of the Punters Club.’

Co-owner Mark Wilson

“We really want this room to sound great, stuff that really works in the room. We’ve got a 3am licence, so we want fun, positive, upbeat live stuff, and DJs as well.”

Double J radio host Henry Wagons was among the musicians who as young artists cut their teeth at the Punters Club in the ’90s and early 2000s.

Henry Wagons played at the Punters Club in the early 2000s and has welcomed its return.Credit: Simon Schluter

“Before I played at the Punters, I’d go to the Punters,” he said. “To this very day, some of my favourite gigs ever were at the Punters Club. It was a creative soup ... everyone felt at home.”

Wagons said the old venue was “a music mecca” with a comfortable, divey front bar. But he also acknowledged “times have changed” and to successfully stage live music, small venues needed to adapt to survive challenging economic times.

“The new owners are young, but they’re old enough to understand the legacy, and what they’re taking over,” he said. “You can’t have a relic, particularly in such a prime location.

“I like the balance of what it was, and what it needs to be. I go in there and feel nostalgic, but I don’t feel like it’s a museum piece.”

Farrell, Wilson and their business partners were still teens when Dan Warner regularly played in the Punters’ band room. He played hundreds of gigs, initially with the Warner Brothers and later with long-running Sunday afternoon duo Dan and Al (Al MacInnes).

“The pub was centred around music,” Warner said. “We weren’t famous, but all of a sudden, the Warner Brothers were playing there – and we were a country band in the ’90s – and the people took ownership of it, it was celebrated.

“Any venues that focus on music are great, particularly in Melbourne. There’s so much good music out there, and we need these small venues that put on original music.”

Farrell began organising underage gigs at venues when he was 14, and said booking venues for more than two decades in Sydney and Melbourne prepared him for this new challenge.

“We understand the emotions attached to this pub, we understand the legacy,” he said.

“We want to add new chapters, and make sure it’s here for another 20-plus years, for those who loved it, and a new generation.”

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