News May 15, 2018

Yours & Owls’ Benjamin Tillman on the new live venue opening in Canberra

Polish Club

Image: Ian Laidlaw

When Canberra lost its iconic ANU Bar last year as part of the multi-million dollar redevelopment of the Australian National University, the music industry lost another entertainment venue, and another stop on the touring circuit.

The venue and student bar was a cornerstone for Canberra, having hosted the likes of Ty Dolla Sign, The Amity Affliction, The Dandy Warhols, and so many more.

The ANU Bar as it was known has been knocked down but thankfully a new $263 million site development is underway. Pitched as a mini-city within the campus, and set to be completed in 2019, the site will include an entertainment precinct, complete with a few venue spaces.

In the meantime though, a new live venue has been activated at ANU.

300 – 550 capacity venue, Molo Live @ ANU, will launch on May 26 with an all-day live music christening from Polish Club, The Gooch Palms, Citizen Kay, Genesis Owusu, Purple Sneakers DJs – Next Gen and Cressy (Good Content).

Molo Live @ ANU was born after consultants at the university got in touch with Yours & Owls, the festival promoter, event organiser, venue booker and live music consultant.

Yours & Owls festival in Wollongong

The consultants saw how Yours & Owls handled the bookings for Wollongong’s equivalent, UOW Unibar; the company essentially increased the venue’s shows from around six to seven shows a year to around 100 shows a year.

As its booker Benjamin A Tillman tells TIO, the plan is to do the same at Molo Live @ ANU.

“We’re obviously speaking with all the agents and industry,” says Tillman, “letting them know there’s a new venue on the map. Having a big student body on campus and direct lines of communication with them to market shows is obviously a huge pro.

“We’ve also got a cool launch party happening to kick things off in style and we’re also in talks about a few launch series’, to make sure content is keeping on coming through the venue until we start getting a few months down the line and the shows have been booked in advance around tours and whatnot.”

Yours & Owls festival

The partnership between Australian National University and Yours & Owls may have been six months in the making, but with Tillman and his team’s track-record for placing non-metro areas well and truly on the touring map, Molo Live @ ANU is in good hands.

“New projects are always fun and exciting,” Tillman tells TIO. “I think the most exciting thing is going to be learning more about the local Canberra scene. Getting familiar with all the local acts, what types of bands work & don’t work, and just getting a better understanding of the ‘vibe’ and taste of the place. Seeing how it compares to Wollongong is then also a huge interest and maybe figuring out why that might be…. the ‘sound’ of a city is always really interesting.”