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 Just before Christmas 2010, GEARED sat down and talked proverbial turkey with BROWNING STREET STUDIOS’ SALLY LINDENBERG and SARAH GALL at the West End music hub.
GEARED: Firstly, do you guys mind telling about me yourselves and how this music central came about?
SARAH GALL: We’ve been around for about two years in this part of West End. It started off when I was a music teacher working from home for 10 years, and it got to the point where it was difficult to get security working from home in the inner city. A lot of my friends, who are also musicians living in sharehouses, were experiencing a similar situation, and we decided to start a studio we could teach from and have space that we could set up how we wanted. We started looking for a space with a commercial lease, and at the time the collective had built up to 20 teachers. Our core business is music teaching, but we also provide studio spaces for a range of purposes from retail to rehearsal and recording rooms.
SALLY LINDENBERG: The way I’ve come into it, I’ve had my brass and woodwind repair business for almost ten years, working from home. I met Sarah when she was looking for someone starting up a retail space as a way to earn a few dollars down the road, so I moved my workshop from home and opened up the retail side of things in October. Now, we’ve got guitar repair, brass and woodwind repair and retail.
G: Do you mainly retail those instruments?
SL: No, we’ve got a really wide range – we’ve got a lot of instruments here that are sourced locally. There are some Native American flutes that a guy from Brisbane makes, a Chinese guzheng – which is like a harpsichord – and we’ve got some Turkish drums made by another local guy. Our main focus at the moment is on guitars and as for brass and woodwind, we mainly focus on the second-hand instruments that I’ve serviced and also vintage horns: saxophones, clarinets ... I love doing that sort of work.
G: I first came across the Browning Street Studios on Facebook where I’d see events like musician jams, small gigs...
SG: We’ve inadvertently become a bit of a venue since we opened – particularly because we’re not a licensed venue, but we could still put on small events. We’ve put on about 100 shows so far, which was something I didn’t quite expect, but something kind of ... growing. So yeah, we’ve had a few performance-based events and produced a lot of larger events in other venues, but at the moment we’re looking at doing some reconfiguration. Now we’ve opened the shop where some of those performances used to be and we’re reconfiguring upstairs a little bit so we can put on intimate shows. For most of our shows, we’ve had an interstate headliner and sometimes we’d have an international band headline – which was quite bizarre – but I think people really like the intimate nature of it. It’s real – we’re not trying to make money out of selling beer, just putting on shows and paying our musicians. There has been a lot of community support for that; continuing to do small events is something we’re excited about.
G: Are you planning to put on a lot of events in 2011?
SG: We’re going to be relaunching the new venue in about two weeks’ time [now active – Geared Editor] and as of January, we should be having regular weekly events.
G: By intimate events, do you mean more acoustic-based performances?
SG: Oh, we do pretty much everything – there are some very intimate hardcore events... [laughs]
G: An intimate hardcore event – that’s a great way of putting it!
SG: The way I see it – and I think it also goes for all genres, not just singer-songwriters – is if you’ve got 30 people right in front of you in the room, there’s a lot more energy and excitement no matter what genre of music you’re playing than in a venue that fits 300 people and only 30 people are standing around. The best shows we’ve done, there were a few people in your face and they were heaps of fun. They’re not something we like to do all the time – there’s a lot of risk when you’ve got a lot of people jumping around in a small space, but with the right mix of people and the right bands it’s a lot of fun.
SL: As far as configuring the upstairs goes, we’ve had a bit of a test run at the opening – I think it will be a good little space to have as a venue.
G: Thanks guys!
For more information on Browning Street Studios head to www.browningstreetstudios.com.au or call 1300 801 390.
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