Alice Springs has a population of 34,000 and exactly one dedicated live music space: a heavy metal venue called the Black Wreath. It has hosted hundreds of bands from around the country over the past decade – despite being 1,500km from the nearest city.
For musicians in central Australia, the Black Wreath is a one-of-a-kind resource. So when its operators were informed last year of the owners’ plans to sell, they negotiated a stay of execution and began devising a fundraiser that could save the desert venue. A month-long crowdfunding campaign, which called for donations that would let the team behind the Black Wreath buy the venue and place it in a trust, hit its $1m target on Friday.
The Black Wreath’s founder and creative director, a lip-pierced and leather-clad man known mononymously as Pirate, says it feels surreal to have raised so much money for what is a DIY, volunteer-run venue far off the beaten touring track.
“I haven’t quite processed it,” he says. “We’re feeling very overwhelmed and a lot of gratitude.”
Pirate says the $1m arrived in donations from $20 up to $10,000 and came from supporters around Australia. The grand vision is to use the money to keep the Black Wreath alive to give musicians from central Australia a space to perform, “and for Alice to be a touring destination for other artists year-round”.
But the work is not done yet. Pirate says the successful Pozible campaign is just “step one” towards securing the Black Wreath’s future and that “there’s multiple ways that could unfold”. He still has to negotiate with owners, who have an asking price of $1.23m on the venue – a sum higher than the amount the fundraiser collected. Pirate wants to secure additional funding through philanthropy and by “reaching out to some of the biggest bands in the world”. The Black Wreath is still gratefully accepting donations, and has set a new fundraising target of $1,111,111 – a nod to the date of the Black Wreath’s inception: 11 November 2011.
The fundraising campaign comes two years after the Tote, some 2,300km away in Melbourne, crowd-sourced $3m to keep itself open.
The Black Wreath was born out of the desire “to put Alice Springs on the map” and “create something that is available as a resource for the entire town”, Pirate says.
“I grew up playing in bands with my friends here, and we were extremely limited with pathways and opportunities – no one nationally recognised this place as a heavy music town,” he says. “There was not much we could do with it. There weren’t any studios, venues or rehearsal rooms.”
A collective of three bands founded The Black Wreath as a record label and a series of backyard studios, before later leasing what was then a run-down industrial building and turning it into a creative hub complete with a recording studio, rehearsal spaces and stage. The collective expanded and now operates a national heavy music festival, Blacken Open Air, which takes place in April and May one hour outside Alice Springs.
Pirate believes the reason the town has such an affinity for heavy metal stems from “the isolation of the place – small-town frustration”.
“Growing up with lack of opportunity and a lot of energy, you just identify with metal,” he says. “Metal is a global community. And young people, when you discover that, it makes you feel part of something bigger … [especially if] you already feel like you’re disconnected from the world”.
While the Black Wreath was born out of a love for metal, Pirate says the venue serves “every genre of music” and the entire Alice community: “Young people. First Nations communities. The queer community. The headbangers and the rockers and the punks, and also the doofers and the hip-hoppers.”
But the challenges of running a music venue in one of the most isolated locations on Earth are plentiful, especially given that it only sells alcohol – where most venues make the bulk of their income – “a few times a year”, to cover production costs at select, bigger events.
“The expenses of doing it are higher than anywhere else in the country,” Pirate says. “The cost of travel for bringing artists out here is just astronomical … for the last decade or so, it’s been a struggle.”
Pirate works as a volunteer and doesn’t draw a wage from the Black Wreath, instead propping it up with income from his various day jobs. The venue is operated “purely for the love”, he says.
He hopes the success of the fundraising venture inspires others to fight for live music.
“It is a tough time for the music industry,” he says. “And I just hope that people can see the real power of community – the power is in our hands. We can do something about it, and keep fighting to uplift live music.”
