The only Gaelic in the village
Andrew P Street charts the evolution of an iconic Sydney live music venue
Cooking with Gaelic
Things are changing at the Gaelic Theatre. The venerable Surry Hills venue has long been a favourite for touring acts, but the venue's events manager Clayton Ries explains that he's expanding the brief.
"What we're aiming to do here is have seated shows Tuesday, Wednesday and Thursday, and really aim at creating a hub of entertainment here in Surry Hills. Seats are going to bring a different demographic and a different vibe into the venue, so therefore we've also put in a cocktail bar upstairs, so people can grab a drink, go back down, relax and watch some good music on the stage."
This, incidentally, doesn't mean that the Gaelic are abandoning their rock gigs. "There are still stand-up [as opposed to seated] shows, and if there's an artist that's big enough that wants to book a mid-week show, I'm still going to do those big rock and dance shows," Ries hastens to assure us. "We're just trying to create a stablemate [to the established tours and events] so that the doors are open five nights a week instead of three.
And we're looking at opening [next door venue] the Madison upstairs, either a dance culture or mid-week acoustic shows. And in regards to the Gaelic's seated shows, we're trying to bring in a different aspect to your Vanguard or Basement: their capacity's smaller than ours and also they give you the option to have food, whereas we give you the option to walk in, pay for a cheap ticket and watch a good show."
The Gaelic and the Madison are both owned by the same hotel group, allowing Ries to look at ways to book them in a complementary fashion - as happened recently with the Essential Festival.
"Yeah, that's the third time we've used the Madison [with Essential] and it just looks good," he declares. "And the Hippo Lounge on a Friday or Saturday night you can do little dance vibes with 150-200 people in there. And midweek you can pretty much set it up with 20 tables and chairs so people can have a nice meal while listening to acoustic music.
Ries' ambitions don't end with the venues either. He reveals that he's hoping to enlist other key venues in a scheme to revitalise the area's live scene. "As a long-term project, we're planning on speaking to the Hopetoun and the Excelsior and trying to make Surry Hills more of a hub of entertainment - sorta like the Newtown precinct."
"I mean, we're not Oxford Street, we don't have a row of nightclubs where people can swap during the night and go ‘OK, let's go to that one' - but I think if we join up we can create a vibe about the music industry again. The live scene is growing, but I think it needs an added push somewhere and it's about time to put it in process."