The Venue Looking To Reinvigorate Live Music In The Heart Of WA

A prominent WA venue has recently undergone extensive renovations, with a view to reinvigorate live music in Northbridge.

Following the sale of Irish pub Rosie O'Grady's last year, new owners Clint Nolan and Paul Moloney relaunched it as Johnny Fox's in December, and in the process made a commitment to live music, allowing booker Lee Reader to completely overhaul The Boston, the live space attached to it.

Launching earlier this month as Lynott's Lounge (named after the Thin Lizzy frontman), the live music space with a capacity of 200 (currently operating at 150 due to COVID restrictions) is almost unrecognisable.

“The changes have been drastic,” Reader told The Music.

“With The Boston, there were issues with the sound – the PA was very lacking. If the sound bled over into Rosie O'Grady's, the owners were like, ‘Turn it down.’ It was a room that was not being used, so they said, ‘If you want to use it as a music venue you can, but only if it suits us.’

“Whereas now, the owners are 100% on board and are very excited to have a dedicated live music venue, not just something that’s an afterthought. And so the production is amazing; we’ve got a massive d&b [PA] in there. The sound is more suited to a 1,000 capacity room – we really went overboard just to have that headroom to be able to sound great at all times for any band.

“Lighting rig – same deal. We threw so much lighting in there… going in there, as far as the stage goes, it’s really impressive. We changed the stage as it was on a weird triangle angle and made it straight, we’ve gotten ridden of the stupid one-metre-tall drum riser on the stage and put a normal drum rise on there.

“Everything as far as stage and production is just completely up-to-date and the specs are really good.”

The room itself has also undergone a complete transformation, with the large sliding doors in the middle of the room and awkwardly situated fireplace removed before it got a new paint job.

“It’s just a big open-planned space now,” Reader said.

“The bar has been changed and made a bit more modernised with a big wall of booze behind it; we’ve got a really good selection.

“The bones of The Boston are still there, but it’s completely different now; people walk in and they’re amazed. The response we’ve had from bands has been epic.”

The reason behind such extensive work on the space was because Reader and co didn’t “want to have this as an afterthought music venue”.

“We’re dedicated to a proper live music venue for Northbridge, because obviously it’s been a little while since Northbridge has had a grassroots rock’n’roll type venue. You know, we’ve got Jack Rabbit Slim's, which is more suited to electronic music, indie and dance, and then we’ve got The Bird, which does great, but it’s a little bit cliquey kind of thing, whereas we wanted to be accessible to all styles.

“Having small venues is important – there was a lot of focus on having those mid-large sized venues once The Bakery closed; there was that big uproar that Perth doesn’t have enough medium-large sized venues.

“We wanted to bring a grassroots, small-mid sized venue to Northbridge, really focusing on the mid-level local touring acts, so that’s what we’re going for.”

At this stage, with touring still up in the air for many local acts, Lynott's Lounge is currently booking interstate artists for July onwards.

“We’re just trying to be as positive as possible, and if it doesn’t happen we’ll just keep running with local Perth acts for as long as we need to.”

Check out more images below and head to theGuide for all upcoming dates and other info.