For over 50 years bustling Brunswick Street has been the centre of the inner-city nightlife, with no shortage of venues, bars, restaurants, and cafés to attract both locals and tourists for a night on the town.
Whilst the bohemian culture has endured, there are only a few venues that have managed not just to survive but prosper.
Bar Open is one, that for 25 years has hosted several generations of punters keen to experience first-hand the homegrown bands and musicians that give Melbourne the reputation of being the indie-music capital of Australia.
However not many people realise it’s not just the venue, but also the performers who have made it through to the 25-year anniversary of Bar Open.
The Chilli Pickers’ 25th-anniversary celebrations, playing at Bar Open
- Friday 20th September
- 6pm – 8pm
- Bar Open – 317 Brunswick St, Fitzroy
- FREE
Keep up with the latest music news, features, festivals, interviews and reviews here.
The Chilli Pickers are one such band that whose members have been playing at Bar Open since it opened in the late 90s.
Band members Gus Macmillan, Kate Connor Jane McCracken and Keith Urquhart play folk-inspired bluegrass and Appalachian tunes, but are all veterans with an intriguing musical pedigree from the Melbourne music scene dating back to the 90s.
In the early days, Gus Macmillan played Blue Grassy Knoll, a bluegrass/punk band that toured globally for four years. He fondly remembers gigs in the upstairs band room of Bar Open with other acts such as Ergot Derivative or The Hoodangers.
“They were wild nights, the room would be packed with people dancing and drinking, the crowds would line up down the staircase to get in. We sometimes wouldn’t start until midnight and the crowd were in a mood for a kick on.”
Kate Connor also played at Bar Open in the late 90’s, in the seven-piece band Adana. These gigs showcased a more sophisticated energy, with masterful musicians playing original and traditional tunes from the Eastern European and klezmer genres.
Kate remembers the stage was opposite where you walk in today – the audience would be sitting on the floor, or on old couches that had seen better days, while the band played hypnotic arrangements of swirling tunes. She was a mother of two toddlers at the time and remembers having to leave straight after gigs, just as the party was getting started!
Jane McCracken is a singer-songwriter who was a regular of Melbourne’s live music scene in the 90s. She performed solo as well as with bands such as alt-country band Fibrotown and indie-pop band The Foots. Her memories of Bar Open are intermingled with other Brunswick Street venues such as (the newly re-opened) Punters Club, “I used to be a hotdogs vendor out the front of the Punters Club and after that pub closed at 1am, people would buy a hotdog before heading across the street to Bar Open where they could drink for another few hours.
“My memories of those days are a bit hazy, but the atmosphere of Bar Open really hasn’t changed in all this time – the décor and vibe of the place instantly takes me back to my hot-dog selling youth!”
Keith Urquhart was also a member of multiple experimental bands from those days, including The Mavis’s, the 90’s seminal art-punk band Clowns Smiling Backwards, and FIMO (Friends in Mutual Orgasm), a synth-pop band that would play upstairs at Bar Open to a curious collection of fringe artists and performers keen to subvert the dominant paradigm.
Keith remembers despite dreading the late-night pack up after gigs, having to lug his bass rig down the stairs, at least his trip home was a short one, merely a few hundred metres down the road to his sharehouse on Kerr Street
In 2006, Kate and Gus formed Devil Goat Family String Band, an alt-bluegrass band playing original tunes who played for another 14 years at Bar Open’s downstairs front bar on Friday and Saturday evenings.
They loved the mixture of a crowd that would be there to see the band, some who were fans, and others who had simply wandered in off the street, lured in by the energetic sounds of fiddle and banjo, and found themselves intoxicated by the venue’s allure.
DGFSB were such a regular part of the line-up that they have played shows for Bar Open’s 10th-year and 20th-year celebrations, a fact that Kate and Gus are both proud of and a little sheepish about, considering how much it shows their age.
So, this Friday 20th September, you can see Kate, Gus, Jane and Keith perform as The Chilli Pickers at the 25th-anniversary celebrations of Bar Open. They are a band grateful that the stars have aligned to allow them to bring their collective experience to the venue that has provided them with so many musical memories over half a lifetime. Come join them!
The Hoodangers and Four Scoops
The Hoodangers started playing at Bar Open’s upstairs regularly following the end of their legendary Wednesday night in Fitzroy following the demise of The Punters Club.
That was around 2002. Frontman Ben Gillespie relates that on many nights with The Hoodangers, they had to stop people dancing. “People seemed to dance to our style of music by often jumping up and down at the same time and the wave that was set up in the floor was truly disturbing, sometimes bouncing up and down by around 20 centimetres. I would stand at the edge for some safety, not wanting to end up falling into the front bar below.”
Ben also played regularly at Bar Open with The Snappers and, for the last ten years, has played Fridays with The Four Scoops in the popular front bar gigs alongside regulars like Craig Fermanis, Lynn Wallis, Jono Brown, Sam Leman & Chris Becker, who played in the likes of like Virus, The J&T Hour and The Band Who Knew Too Much. “It was also a haven for these and other bands as well as being a great late-night hang for musicians after we finished gigs elsewhere.”
