Shotkickers Is Fundraising An Expansion: ‘We Want To Be Able To Give Bands That First Single Launch Level Gig’

With over a quarter of all live music venues shutting down in the last four years and 93 per cent of those remaining reporting a downturn in income, Australia's live music industry is facing its biggest crisis in a generation. It is also generating more money than ever.

In 2023, the gross revenue for live music concerts in Australia was $1.4 billion, but little of that goes to artists and even less to the small venues that support them.

Already saddled with skyrocketing operating costs, small venue owners must draw people who have more leisure options and less spending money than ever. For many, the smart option would be to do away with live music altogether. But for Chris Windley, the owner of Thornbury venue Shotkickers, that's not an option.

"It would be cheaper to do that," Windley admits, "but I'm just not interested. We need those small spaces for bands to grow and to get to those bigger rooms, and there's just not many left."

Many of the problems faced by Windley are those associated with success. Since opening in the wake of the pandemic in 2021, Shotkickers has remained a small venue that hosts small bands of all sorts of different styles, and with a 200-person capacity, it doesn't take many people for the venue to feel busy and for a band to hold a room. But now, it is ready to grow. Having taken over the lease of an adjacent property, Shotkickers is expanding, and it is calling on the community to help it. 

“Shotkickers as we know it will become the band room, and we’ll score a new bar for food and drinks in a separate space,” says Windley, sitting in a sunlit booth at the front of his long, narrow venue. “We also gain a smoking area, which allows us to move smokers off the footpath out the front."

Unlike other recently expanding venues, Windley is keen to keep the band room the same size. Plans are for a full dinner service, a pool table, pinball machines, trivia and DJs on weekends and the new light-filled space will be able to cater to lunchtime crowds. A vision like this requires funding, so over the last few weeks the campaign Embiggen Shotkickers has been running to help fund the expansion.

"A lot of people think that we should be essentially ripping the bar out and just making this a bigger band room. But for me... Tuesday nights are a great example. On Tuesdays, we do our hip-hop thing. We get, like, maybe between 50 and 70 people and it feels absolutely pumping. If you emptied this room out and you had 70 people in here, it would feel dead."

As the property market and cost of living crisis change, gig-goers and bands are increasingly unable to live near the centre of Melbourne. Many venues are struggling to find clientele to call them their local. Thornbury is amid a development boom, with the construction of apartments in nearby Preston already booming and set to increase even more over the next decade. 

"I genuinely think that this strip is going to pop off, and it already is," Windley says. "Whenever I go to have meetings about the expansion and we try to go and get a seat anywhere along High Street, it's always packed. There are so many cool new businesses opening up around here, but it doesn't feel frantic or touristy. There's something going on, and it's really exciting, but it doesn't feel hectic."

When it comes to running the venue, Windley reveals that, generally, the heavier the music, the more the fans will drink. Given the surging taxation on beer and spirits, however, to be able to make the same profit he did when Shotkickers opened, he would have to be charging $17 or $18 a pint which, he laughs, "is a stupid idea for a punk show."

While there is government funding, the amounts given to venues to help with their production costs – usually in the tens of thousands of dollars – is welcome but barely enough. One of the most recent examples, the Victorian government's 10,000 Gigs fund, invited venues to apply for grants of up to $10,000 to go towards artists’ fees.

In the case of some Fitzroy venues, $10,000 is the one-day's operational cost. Last week's Revive Live grants spread $7.7 million between 110 festivals and venues. Funds were not available for venue expansions.

Despite having shows seven nights a week, Windley says he has never had a problem filling a bill. In fact, he nods guiltily, Shotkickers is often accused of not responding to the bands who ask to play there. "We're just too full all the time," he explains. 

"People love going out on this side of town, and there's obviously money around," he says. "But I think a lot of the people that go to those smaller shows are musicians themselves, and that pool is quite small. I feel that with the expansion that we could tap into that greater audience of people who are going out on the weekends, give them the same relaxed vibe that we have here, and that they would hopefully subsidize the music so that there isn't so much pressure on a band to fill the venue." 

Last month, a national survey by The Australia Institute found that 64 per cent of 16-25-year-olds said attending live music is important to them. The major barrier was the cost and the opportunity to see bands. With families moving to and living in and around Thornbury and its rapidly growing neighbouring suburb of Preston, Shotkickers is in a prime position to be able to offer young bands and fans the chance to have formative experiences.

"We really do want to be able to give bands that, you know, that first single launch kind of level gig," Windley says. "If you bring 80 people to a place like the Evelyn or the Northcote Social Club or whatever, it's awkward. You want it to feel good, and you want it to be exciting. It should be celebrated that you can bring 80 people to one place."

That Shotkickers has a track record of doing this is shown by the success of the Embiggen Shotkickers fundraising venture so far. While Windley doesn't expect to reach its $200,000 goal, even raising a tenth of that would be enough to ensure that the project will still go ahead.

"Given our location, if we can weather the storm, I think we're in pole position," Windley says. "A lot of people come as regulars, but since we book so many acts every night, you might roll up here and it might be a metal band or a Latin band, and it might not be your thing. So, to have a place next door where you can always go is a way to make a place that can be trusted, a place you can always go to."

Embiggen Shotkickers runs until Thursday, October 31.