If there's any truth to the line that if you want to make small fortune in Sydney's music scene you start with a large fortune and then open a venue, then Jake Smyth and Kenny Graham aren't buying it.
The men behind Newtown's Mary's Burgers – the caterer of choice for the music industry in recent years – and the Unicorn Hotel in Paddington have bought the legendary Lansdowne Hotel on the fringe of the CBD and are returning it to its past incarnation as a music venue.
![Food, music and big dreams for the new owners of the Lansdowne Hotel: Jake Smyth, centre, and Kenny Graham, right, with ...](/web/20170415150930im_/http://www.smh.com.au/content/dam/images/g/v/j/5/u/p/image.related.articleLeadwide.620x349.gvj62q.png/1492179355019.jpg)
Yes, they are opening a venue for around 250 patrons in a town where closing music rooms is a habit hard to shake. Something the owners of the similarly sized Newtown Social Club, 10 minutes down the road from the Lansdowne, are due to do on April 23.
"There's a hole in the market for an intermediate-size room," said a confident rather than hopeful Smyth.
![Renovations are under way at the iconic venue.](/web/20170415150930im_/http://www.smh.com.au/content/dam/images/g/v/j/5/u/u/image.related.articleLeadwide.620x349.gvj62q.png/1492179355019.jpg)
He's the 34-year-old Australian half of the burly, bearded, music-loving, food-making partnership which, with the 35-year-old Graham, was forged over a beer or two in Edinburgh a decade ago and has taken in working at hip restaurants Bodega and Porteno.
The pair are too young to have seen the Lansdowne in its prime as a home for bands on the rise, even if they had grown up in Sydney instead of Jervis Bay and Perthshire, Scotland. But they have seen some of its recent, and less than successful, incarnations as a restaurant, a covers band room and a dingy uni haunt.
The men, and their music booker Matt Rule (one half of the Rule brothers who once ran the Annandale Hotel, another legendary Sydney music venue), were standing among the flying dust and noisy machinery of the ground floor. That's the part where bands such as You Am I, The Living End, the Go-Betweens, Smelly Tongues and others with less memorable names, have played.
Come June (a hopeful date given the massive renovations began in February, but "we've been running this like a motherf---er", beamed Smyth), the black paint on the outside will have been stripped away and the wonky neon sign fixed. The ground floor will be home to the bar, a kitchen – doing Detroit-style pizzas and maybe burgers – and lounges.
![The renovations started in February and the new owners hope to open in June.](/web/20170415150930im_/http://www.smh.com.au/content/dam/images/g/v/j/5/u/o/image.related.articleLeadwide.620x349.gvj62q.png/1492179355019.jpg)
There will be two levels of outdoor space and the music will happen upstairs. (There will be separately run accommodation on the third level.)
The live music space is a room dotted with pillars and a heritage fireplace, set up to accommodate fans in front of the stage, while casual listeners can be tucked away in corners. It will utilise technology that will allow live recordings and broadcasting.
And no poker machines. "We f---ing hate them," said Smyth.
It's an arrangement that sounds very Sydney at the moment, and Graham confessed that "we're not expecting to make money out of live music".
Smyth said, "Sydney is a very food-motivated city", but said if the venture does fill that hole in the market it will be for a number of reasons.
"It's not about the food, it's not even about music, it's about culture," he said, hoping that – unlike some recent attempts at inner-city rooms that shipped in Melbourne ideas but didn't always connect to the local community – the Lansdowne becomes somewhere "to hang" for the students from the three universities and colleges nearby, music scene denizens and people who just want somewhere that's better than merely tolerable to socialise.
Building those ties, said Graham, comes down to the venue being a place to be before and after the music is played, becoming what Rule calls "a destination".
"It's all-in-one here and multi-tiered businesses are important to punters," said Rule who appears the hard-head veteran in this trio but is actually as much a dreamer about reviving the Sydney music scene as the new owners.
As he points out, the Lansdowne sits outside the lockout laws perimeter and will have a 3am licence – perfect to eat, drink, mix and even hear music, after the bigger places shut.
With what Smyth and Graham describe as enthusiastic support from Sydney City Council and even encouragement from the licensing police, it may just be a combination to overcome Sydney's reputation for killing its night life.