Everything old is new again … and all that jazz
Brisbane Jazz Club is relocating briefly while undergoing a revamp to its popular riverside home at Kangaroo Point.
After surviving floods, fire and the COVID-19 shutdown, Brisbane Jazz Club is receiving a much-needed makeover of its Kangaroo Point home.
From March 12, the club’s concerts will temporarily relocate to the Officers Mess on Oxlade Drive in nearby New Farm while structural works extend and enhance the popular live music venue.
Long-serving Brisbane Jazz Club volunteer and immediate past president David Herbert explains that the musicians have been making do with a cramped stage for many years.
“Renovations are already happening in so much as they can without breaking into the building, but we will close down as the roof over the back part of the club will be raised. And at the moment it’s incredibly low,” says Herbert. “You can see all the scrapes on the ceiling from the neck of the double bass.”
The works are funded by club savings and a Brisbane City Council community grant, recently announced by Lord Mayor Adrian Schrinner.
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Newspaper photographers captured the moment in April 1972 when then Lord Mayor Clem Jones was ferried across the flooded Brisbane River in a rowboat to officially open the venue. But the origins of the club stretch back further.
In 1968, the newly formed Adventurers Club held a meeting in a North Quay boathouse packed with enthusiastic new members. The very next day, the place went up in flames. Undeterred, the group leased an upstairs warehouse in Newstead. It was there that an umbrella of new organisations sprung up to navigate the liquor licensing laws of the day.
“And so there was the Parachute Club, the Riverside Folk Club, the Adventurers Club, the Brisbane Jazz Club and quite possibly a few others as well,” Herbert explains. “By juggling those permits, they were allowed to stay open for a reasonable amount of time as long as their members wanted to, and run a functional bar. The Parachute Club would go from 6pm to 8pm and then the Adventurers Club from 8pm till 10pm, and so on.”
Before long, Brisbane Jazz Club was hunting for a home of its own.
“They did what adventurers do – got in a speedboat and went up and down the Brisbane River surveying the shore and seeing what they could find,” Herbert says.
The group discovered a disused boat shed near the Story Bridge, which had been home to the Brisbane Ladies Rowing Club and was leased by the South Queensland Power Boat Club. The neighbourhood was a very different place back then.
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“It was all small industrial sites – radiator works and small engineering-type businesses. It wasn’t a particularly attractive area at Kangaroo Point. Nothing like it is now, that’s for sure,” Herbert says.
A key part of the current renovations is an upgrade to the retaining wall that protects the club.
“It was built back in the ’70s by well-intentioned amateurs, but on a strict budget grabbing whatever they could in terms of material. So, it’s not a very solid wall at all,” Herbert explains. “It wasn’t the intention going about this building project to make the club bigger so much as to make it more substantial and more resilient to weather and floods.”
The roof and retaining wall works will enable the club’s indoor stage to move back towards the river by an extra metre or so and be framed by new windows. The Jazz Age-inspired mural at the front of the club will go to make room for extensions to the office and green room. (Remarkably, the club’s deck is built on the foundation of a decommissioned barge that was sourced by early members for the princely sum of $10.)
Since its creation, Brisbane Jazz Club has been powered by a large group of volunteers who split many of the duties. A handful of paid staff keep the bar and kitchen going and oversee programming.
The club stages gigs four nights a week, in addition to its popular festivals, which include events for younger audiences and budding musicians. The venue features traditional jazz alongside adjacent genres including big band, swing, blues, Latin and soul. A string of renowned jazz artists has played there including James Morrison, Galapagos Duck, Tyrone Noonan and Emma Pask, to mention just a few.
Herbert has been involved with the club for the past 20 years, during which time the building has survived not one but two major floods.
“I particularly remember in 2011 we were advised that the flood waters were rising. We knew that later in the day our beloved jazz club was going to go under, and sure enough it did. But we did have enough time, and because we’ve got lots of members who love the club, we had people with vans and trucks help us get everything off site.”
Community station Radio 4EB, nearby on higher ground, offered the club space to store their furniture and priceless grand piano.
“Both those floods have been very galvanising for our community. People can remember the time they came in and they helped put the Brisbane Jazz Club back together again, and it makes everybody feel like they’re very much part of a club and something that’s worth saving.”
From March 12, Brisbane Jazz Club will temporarily stage performances at Officers Mess, New Farm, on Thursday nights. An International Jazz Day concert will be held on April 30. A reopening celebration at Kangaroo Point is yet to be announced.
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