How Marrickville gets its Qirkz back

Lead Singer of gypsy jazz band Monsieur Camembert Yaron Hallis says hundreds have written to council in support of his application to reopen his iconic Marrickville music venue, Qirkz.

Established in a warehouse space, Qirkz was shut down due to state fire regulations in March last year.

Hallis said a best case scenario would be to reopen in less than six months.

“It’s a question of what hoops we’re going to have to jump through – what we’re going to have to do to for them to actually let it go ahead. It can be something that is, loosely speaking, within the realm of affordability; or they can just make it so prohibitive there’s no way we’ll ever be able to do it,” Hallis said.

“All will be revealed over the next few weeks.”

Since the closure, Hallis has opened nearby music venue Camelot Lounge.

“It’s basically just camels everywhere. So it’s been a place for me to house my camel collection, which was in boxes at Qirkz,” he said.

His extensive camel collection gained the attention of the ABC’s Collectors and Seven’s Today Tonight.

“And my old house actually had a camel room, and every inch of it was either camel paintings or sculptures or toys…,” he said.

“We’ve got two life-size ones and flying camels all around the room.”

Hallis’ hopes to inspire the creation of a live music precinct with venues within a short walk from one another, incorporating existing venues such as the Red Rattler and Factory Theatre.

“There’s not a lot of places in Sydney where you can go from one gig to another gig within a few metres the way you can in other cities,” he said.

Harris also plans to revamp Qirkz with permanent and temporary exhibitions of local art.

But despite his extensive efforts establishing the venues, Hallis says being frontman of Monsieur Camembert is still his main occupation.

“[At Camelot] the other night, we cut up our new set list … and we got the audience to pick our set list for us, and completely randomise the whole experience. It became the silliest session. We’d stuff up an ending, and do it three or four times before we nailed it,” he said.

“A multi-generational, friendly music-focused environment has been something that we’ve felt really passionate about continuing, and have been able to do at this new space.”

By Lawrence Bull