When Joel Taylor, general manager of the revered Taylor Group, signed on the dotted line to take over the Torquay Hotel in 2017, no one could predict the magnitude of what was to become of this iconic Victorian music venue.
It’s hard to overstate what the Torquay Hotel means to many on the Surf Coast. Anyone who grew up or lives south of Geelong, especially in Torquay and its surrounds, feels like they have some ownership of the beloved pub, with its colourful history, rugged approachable aesthetic and long-standing tradition of live music.
A cornerstone of the town, the last few years have seen an inconceivable regeneration and transformation of the venue which has solidified itself as a cultural gem as much as an iconic musical one.
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When Taylor — who has had over 16 years of industry experience — took over the business as a bold new venture into quality dining, he had no real intention of restoring the hotel to its former glory as a live-music icon.
“Being from the area, I’ve always spent a lot of time in Torquay growing up and I knew the pub pretty well,” Taylor explains. “I’d been looking at it over a few years beforehand thinking that something needed to change; I just thought there was some real potential there. I knew how much the area was starting to take off and I thought if we got hold of that pub, we could probably do something pretty great with it.”
Despite taking over the venue in 2017, it wasn’t until almost a year later that Taylor decided on the direction he wanted to take.
“When I take over the venue, the first thing I want to do is learn about the venue and operate it in its current form. I didn’t initially think we’d go down the live music route or sort of large-scale entertainment. I thought we’d probably we’d do an extensive renovation throughout the bar and restaurant and try to bring it up to standard as a dining destination.
“It wasn’t until we had a summer in there that we really thought, hang on there’s a market here for live music, larger scale parties, and indoor-outdoor events here.”
Following some extensive renovations, the venue was now bursting with natural light, an unparalleled degree of compart, a swathe of modern finishes and a high-class yet family-friendly menu, becoming a destination locals and tourists alike could be proud to take their mates, partners and families time and time again.
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This revamped and revitalised venue arrived at a time when local music seemed to be endangered. It was at this point Taylor and local musician and friend Luke Hindson decided on the real vision for the venue: to bring live, local music and atmosphere back to the heart of the surf coast.
“We spent a lot of time in the pub at the time and we spent a lot of time talking to customers, talking to people in the area and we felt that people were hanging for some shows,” Taylor explains.
“So we had a chat with a mate of ours Al O’Neil who booked the Barwon Club for a long time and has been in the industry forever and he gave us the confidence and support to go ahead. So, we pushed the button and got a PA in there and started booking some shows. We just took what we could get, to begin with.”
With the capacity and the desire to host a constant stream of prominent touring acts, Taylor’s decision to enlist Hindson as the booking agent for the venue was the catalyst he needed. While Hindson’s experience extends to being a recording artist and a touring musician, he was instead able to draw from a lifetime of experience, immersing himself deep into the role to help define an industry he loved.
“I’ve never worked in booking professionally before this; I was just in bands myself,” Hindson says.
“Growing up in bands in this region, I always wanted a place to play and I was lucky that we had the Barwon Club and places like that where I lived, but with the Torquay Hotel, we had this vision and ambition to help Torquay to grow culturally, and to create a place where you could see exciting live music.
“We wanted to foster a space where you could see those big names and get that thrill of excitement, and being able to do so without having to travel to Melbourne.”
Guided by this vision, it didn’t take long for the power duo to earn the respect of local live music enthusiasts, announcing the inaugural ‘Summer Series’ back in 2018.
A first not only for the hotel but also for the region, the series saw the likes of The Beautiful Girls, Kim Churchill, San Cisco, Ziggy Alberts, Confidence Man and Phil Jamieson announced, with shows selling out almost instantly.
Running as outdoor performances on a makeshift stage outside, the outdoor sessions were short-lived due to noise implications, however, became a real catalyst for the venue to begin a regular program of music.
“Luke putting together that whole series worth of shows that ran outdoors over summer was a real game-changer for us,” Taylor says,
“While the outdoor shows couldn’t continue, what it did do was put us on the map because we were booking these huge shows for 800 people outside. It opened up the dialogue with a lot of agents and Luke so he could form that relationship.
“We surprised ourselves and we’re proud of it [summer series], it was a great time, but looking forward, it’s been the launch pad for us to push on and do other things. Once we increased the stage size in the band room, increased the band room size, added a bar inside and turned that space into a much better option, with the ability to fit 650 people in there, we became a viable option for bands and touring acts.”
Quite clearly, it was a defining moment for the Torquay Hotel.
Since then, the hotel’s flourishing music culture is attracting world-class acts not just in summer, but all year round, and fostering homegrown talent until they themselves are world-class acts. And no matter your musical persuasion, there’s something for everyone.
“We used to only do a couple of gigs in summer with our first summer series. And then we realised that the appetite was so strong for it, that we started running shows in winter, and then people wanted more so we started running shows midweek in winter,” Hindson says.
“We are finding that as long as we program good, relevant, great shows – and shows to appeal to everybody – that people will want to come.”
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Transforming the Torquay Hotel into a premier music destination for local, national and international artists, this strategy has paid off in spades, with the venue regularly adding second and third shows (quite often mid-week) to acts announced due to the serious demand from gig-goers in the region. This year alone the venue has seen Hockey Dad, Thelma Plum, Spacey Jane, The Rubens, and Boy & Bear while the breadth of performers has ranged from the hottest emerging acts to Australian icons and international superstars.
At a (very brief) glance, the venue has hosted the likes of Sunny Coasts’ pub-punk trio The Chats, legendary Australian rock-royalty The Living End and Spiderbait, hip hop trio Bliss n Eso, art-rockers Tropical Fuck Storm, Warrnambool’s Didirri, Melbourne’s Slowly Slowly, thrash rockers DZ Deathrays, electronic purveyors Boo Seeka, Something For Kate frontman Paul Dempsey, LA underground icons The Growlers, metallers The Amity Affliction, and The Sunnyboys, alongside hosting the beloved local festival, Coastal Jam.
There’s more where that came from too with heaps of gigs booked over the coming months, including Stand Atlantic, Allday, The Dreggs, CW Stoneking and his Primitive Horn Orchestra and Pete Murray, among others.
“We want the Torquay Hotel to be accessible for everyone. Obviously, young people make up a huge section of the people that go out and enjoy live music but they’re not the only ones,” Taylor explains, reflecting on the array of performances so far.
“Ideally we want people to be able to come to the venue no matter what your age or preference in music and be able to find something that you enjoy: enjoy the restaurant, you know, book some accommodation and enjoy a show. We’ll be working on a fairly diverse range of bookings over the next 12 months or so, and really making sure that the region has shows throughout the off-season.
“We want to be somewhere that people who live in the region can come and enjoy live music all year round; where they can enjoy the pub at a time when it feels like it’s more ‘ours’ rather than being overwhelmed by holidaymakers and tourists,” Taylor continues.
“We love the tourists, we love that vibe, but I think the real market for shows is that they are accessible all year round thing. I think that’s ultimately my vision now: to make it a sustainable busy venue 52 weeks of the year, not just, for a 12-week period over the warmer months.”
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A big part of the culture at the Torquay Hotel is the support for local artists, with the venue often allocating emerging bands from the region support slots for big-name bands and fostering a culture of live music for younger bands.
“Luke’s been really strong on that,” Taylor explains. “Luke has been always pushing local bands to get on the bills with some much bigger artists, even where sometimes they might already be touring with a support and then he’ll push to get a local band on as well which we love.
“We love trying to expose some of the younger bands to some experiences they wouldn’t normally have so we definitely want to keep doing that and get more local bands on good bills where they’re playing at the pub to all their friends.
“It all fits into our ethos of trying to support the community and give the community somewhere to go.”
While the venue has come out of the pandemic stronger than ever, there’s no question that they – and the wider music industry – have taken a hit these last few years.
With constant lockdowns, border closures and lack of social interaction, it’s been a hard slog for those operating inside the music world – especially when it came to live music venues. But The Torquay Hotel is a resilient bunch, banding together for some awesome things on the horizon.
“It was tough and, at times I was unsure whether I’d continue in hospitality, to be honest, just because of a strain that been put on me as a business owner and my family,” Taylor reveals.
“I think the reason that I’ve decided to push on is that we’ve got unfinished business. We haven’t achieved what we set out to achieve yet. It’s all going well, but we want to keep making things better and keep supplying the local region with a great venue that does great live music. And we want to tick that box and get it humming all year round.
“So, I just wanted to make sure we were getting the job done that we set out to do. I’m really lucky I’ve got Luke on this because he sort of managed to keep me focused and keep the vision going; he’s really clear on that long-term vision. We’re lucky we’ve got a, a good team to work with.”
Undoubtedly, The Torquay Hotel has become one of Victoria’s best music venues, dedicated to putting on killer gigs and giving up-and-coming bands (not just from our own backyard, but from across the world) a stage.
Gig-goers, live music lovers, and general revelry enthusiasts (of all ages) gather now, head down to the Torquay Hotel and become part of Australian live music history.
Torquay Hotel is located at 36 Bell St, Torquay. Keep up to date with the latest from the Torquay Hotel here.
