Small Brisbane venues are struggling. Is it time for a rescue mission?

This is the kind of bar where you become a regular.

At least that’s what I thought when I stepped through racks of vintage clothing into low-lit Woolloongabba watering hole Can You Keep A Secret this month.

Emily Dennis owns both Can You Keep A Secret in Woolloongabba and It’s Still A Secret in South Brisbane (pictured).Credit: Courtney Kruk

Never mind that it was a Thursday night. Tommy Sexton & The Suggestions had everyone out of their chairs dancing. Why, I thought, had I never been here before?

It came as a surprise when, less than a week after discovering my new favourite bar, it was putting its hand up for help.

“We are reaching out to you in a moment of great urgency,” the GoFundMe post, written by venue owner Emily Dennis, read.

“Our cherished live music venues, It’s Still a Secret and Can You Keep a Secret, are on the precipice of closure. We find ourselves in a dire financial situation that threatens our very existence.”

When I spoke to her this week, Dennis told me that post was one of the hardest things she’s ever had to do.

“I’m here for the community, and to ask them for help was absolutely the last straw,” she said. “But basically, it was do or die.”

Her appeal came just a week after storied Brisbane live music venue The Zoo announced it was shutting its doors after 32 years – and after reaching its highest ticket sales in 2023.

“I knew it was always going to be a love job ... small, independent venues have always struggled,” said Dennis, who opened her first venue 10 years ago. “But this is the worst it’s ever been.”

“We are still facing an uphill battle to keep our doors open,” Dennis wrote in her GoFundMe post.Credit: Courtney Kruk

Worse, even, than the pandemic.

“It’s just across the board. Power, insurance, tax, all our operational costs – everything’s gone up. I haven’t spoken to anyone who isn’t in the same situation.”

Just up the road from Can You Keep A Secret, in a cul-de-sac off Logan Road in the shadow of the Gabba, Dan Rodriguez has also turned to crowdfunding as a last resort to stay afloat.

Rodriguez part-owns and operates three small local venues: Canvas Club, Electric Avenue and Mr Badgers.

The owner of Electric Avenue in Woolloongabba has also sought crowdfunding help to stay afloat.Credit: Courtney Kruk

“It’s not like we’re not busy, we’re actually doing OK,” he says. “But it’s very inconsistent.”

When all your business costs are exponentially rising, that inconsistency can quickly tip things into the red.

“It means our margins are even smaller. You have one bad week, and you’re behind on payments.”

The final straw for Rodriguez was a recent tax bill from the Queensland government.

“Because I own more than 20 per cent in each small business, they have grouped my wages … which puts me over the payroll threshold,” he says. “It’s $65,000 for one year. So that’s my margin right there.”

While the crowdfunding appeals have raised money for both businesses and drawn patronage to the venues, they’ve also – perhaps more importantly – put the issue on political radars.

“The response has been really good,” Dennis says.

“What we need now is for the government to step in, something to make the industry sustainable. Because [GoFundMe] and the grants are just a Band-Aid.”

Cultural sociologist and Griffith University research fellow Dr Ben Green says small venues, particularly those in the live music sector, need an overhaul, in an ecosystem that has been heading towards crisis since before the pandemic.

“The majority of businesses in that sector have always operated marginally,” he says.

“It’s often driven more by passion and interest rather than being the most rational way to try to make a dollar. And that goes especially for small venues.”

Green says long-term measures to shift the dial for venues like Can You Keep A Secret could include an underwritten live music insurance scheme, and community and public ownership – something Dennis says her venues are looking into.

There’s also talk of appointing a night mayor or dedicated cultural officer to advocate for the night-time economy and arts sector, and to act as an intermediary between government and businesses.

But in the short term, the sector needs financial support as people cut back on discretionary spending during the cost-of-living crisis.

“[That could be] funding towards venues or events, or economic stimulus [directed towards] people being affected by the cost-of-living crisis,” Green says.

One suggestion, he says, would be vouchers to encourage patrons back to venues and gigs, like those that supported the disaster-hit north Queensland tourism industry earlier this year.

For people who do have the ability to spend a portion of their pay on a gig or a night out every week or two, this is a reminder that small venues are doing it tough and could use your patronage.

To lose venues like Can You Keep A Secret or Canvas Club and Electric Avenue would reduce our nightlife to the kinds of developments that homogenise cities and strip precincts of personality.

Local artists and creatives need these places as much as Brisbane does to keep it unique.