Don't Look Back

Wally Kempton, aka Wally Meanie, bassist and vocalist with indie rock royalty outfit Even and member of The Meanies, is the perfect person to ask about the City of Yarra's upcoming Leaps & Bounds Music Festival. Over almost an entire month, Leaps & Bounds shines a light on the wondrous Melbourne music scene north of the river. Utilising traditional venues and some not so, as well as traditional ideas of gigs and some very much not so, Leaps & Bounds boasts line-ups to absolutely die for: strategic partnerships with Indigenous communities within the city of Yarra and PBS, and, significantly, an aura of acknowledgement for not only Melbourne music's present, but also its past. Given he's been around the Fitzroy/Collingwood/Richmond music scene forever, when it comes to a celebration of the coolest section of the world's best music town Kempton makes the ideal talking head.

“I think the reason they plucked me out of the ether to talk to people is only because I'm an old bastard that's been living in the City of Yarra all my life,” Kempton offers. While he's clearly only half-joking about this, Kempton is also more than happy to sing the festi's praises. “In some ways it's selling ice to the eskimos, but it is bringing a lot of these venues wider recognition. But a lot of the people who are going to be going probably already know, and they're just going to be going, 'You beauty, a whole bunch more of really good shows!' Also, the scene does sort of quieten down this time of year, probably because of the weather, so it does prompt people to put on shows that they normally wouldn't put on this time of year.”

Leaps & Bounds is about more than just getting out of the house in the middle of a freezing Melbourne winter, however. It's about continuing to support and participate in this vibrant cultural activity. Kempton sees the festival's concentration on what has gone before as a categorically positive thing. Like a lot of Melbourne music lovers, he places special emphasis on one venue that no longer exists in particular: the legendary Punters Club.

“Well you have to think about the past, don't you? You don't have the present if you don't have the past,” he opines. “And, God! I still miss that place [Punters]. Every time I go down Brunswick Street and see that godforsaken thing that's there now, I cringe. After I cringe I have this pang of nostalgia. It was my second lounge room for so many years it wasn't funny. You move on, though, you find other venues. I love going to the Old Bar, I feel really at home there. I love going to the Yarra Hotel there on Johnston Street. I love going to the Napier. So there's still plenty of places around that feel like my second lounge room, but nothing can replace the Punters.”

Those readers who, unlike your correspondent, are too young to remember the Punters' charms are in for something of a history lesson from Kempton.

“I just felt really at home there. The bar staff were always welcoming. It didn't matter if they knew you for a day or a year or a lifetime, everybody seemed to get treated the same way. It was just fun. It was just relaxed. A lot of great friendships started for me there. It was always professionally done. You never got ripped off as a band. The promo was always really well done. It was just such a great place to launch a career. Bands would happily play two or three Punters shows rather than do a bigger venue because they were always confident of getting in the numbers. I guess for a lot of bands it was a bit of a rite of passage, too: if you got a gig at the Punters, you knew you were going in the right direction.”

But enough of the past. What about how Kempton envisages the future? Not insignificantly, he signposts a well worn though still important issue. “I hate to be a boring interviewee, but I don't think anything will change. I can't imagine why it wouldn't go on the way it has been going. Unless gentrification gets to the point where it just can't be done anymore. There might be a 'City of Moreland Festival' in a few years instead of City of Yarra because it'll shift, but there's always going to be something going on.”

Now it's time for Kempton to dish the dirt. There's not much in the way of a scoop, but the atmospherics of the answer are absolutely priceless. “Jesus,” he kicks off. “I mean there certainly have been some wild nights. But trying to remember them all and put them into a context where they're not going to get anyone into trouble is going to be the hard part. The Tote? What can I say? The Meanies kind of grew out of the carpet there. I was living there for a while. Upstairs where the Cobra Bar is, that was my bedroom for a while. I didn't get much sleep, but anyway. All sorts of things happened upstairs at the Tote for the first time. I won't go into too much detail. The owner used to ride his Harley into the main bar when it was time for people to leave. He'd rev it a few times and people were holding their breath because they were suffocating from the fumes. That worked.”

Both of Kempton's bands, The Meanies and Even, are playing as part of Leaps & Bounds, but only one of them is having their own beer brewed for the occasion. “We've actually done a deal with Mountain Goat to create a special Even beer for the nights. We went over to Mountain Goat the other day and helped out with the brewing actually, so that was pretty exciting. There's going to be a special tap and an Even label. It's called Superman Punch.”

And a band Kempton manages, Money For Rope, is doing something slightly unusual as well. “They're doing a silent gig at Yah Yah's. They've got two drummers, so it's going to be pretty funny watching two drummers belting away and everyone wearing headphones. I've seen a silent gig before and they're pretty surreal and really good fun.”