Sydney’s Lansdowne Hotel Bringing Back Concerts

Sydney, Australia’s iconic Lansdowne Hotel, an influential 250-capacity launching pad for the independent scene in the 1980s and 1990s, is returning as a live music venue.  

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The 90-year-old, three-story art deco building was bought by Scottish-born Jake Smyth and Kenny Graham who, aged in their 30s, would not have been aware of the Lansdowne’s legacy, as reported by the Sydney Morning Herald.

In recent years, they moved to Sydney and opened the Unicorn Hotel restaurant and a burger joint Mary’s.

The Lansdowne’s ground floor is being turned into a bar and kitchen selling Detroit-style pizza while an upstairs space will host the music venue. The venue will be booked by Matt and Dane Rule, who ran another indie band launching pad The Annandale, and now through their booking company The Music And Booze Co work with other venues including Brighten Up Bar, The Lord Gladstone and The Botany View.

The Lansdowne’s band room is being renovated to include facilities for bands to record or broadcast their sets.

Graham says a vacuum exists in Sydney for “an intermediate-size room” and the current City of Sydney council is committed to reviving live music.

Outside the city’s lockout zone, its appeal is a 3 a.m. license where punters go after the other venues close. In its heyday, The Lansdowne helped launched the careers of such acts as The Go-Betweens, You Am I, The Hard-Ons, and Lansdowne Hotel,, which went on to global recognition.

It closed in August 2015, a year after new owners Oscars Hotels Group sold it to the Academy of Music and Performing Arts as a campus.