The Bridge Hotel is Sydney’s longest running entertainment pub venue. Under current ownership for over 35 years.
Local band The Hippos became the resident band soon playing every Friday, Saturday and Sunday with their infectious rhythm and blues that had the whole pub a dance floor. Country rock and blues band, Chasin The Train, also began playing regularly and many other acts become resident or regular performers such as The Mighty Reapers and The Foreday Riders and many others. With this emphasis on blues and roots music, overseas touring artists soon began dropping in to check out the local talent and sometimes joining them on stage for a jam.
Numerous international touring acts were to perform from then right up to the present day – From blues outfits from the Mississippi Delta, Zydeco bands from New Orleans, Cajun and Creole bands from the boondocks of Louisiana, West Coast Jump Jive outfits, Texas bar bands, Country legends from Nashville, Southern Soul artists from Memphis, guitar flavoured Chicago acts, New York based blues and jazz acts, drum and beat based acts from the African Continent to of course our own local grown rock, pop and roots acts whose skills had been developed on the back of Australia’s 7 night a week live scene of the 70’s and 80’s.
Hence The Bridge slogan “bringing you the best in a big mix of blues, pop, rock, zydeco, cajun, rockabilly and swamp from Australia and the world”.
Nearly every Australian major act over the last 35 years has performed on The Bridge stage. The Bridge has been blessed to have had a number of our Major Australian acts who would normally play much larger venues do warm up shows at the venue. Midnight Oil, Jimmy Barnes and Neil Finn for example. There is nothing quite like seeing acts of this calibre in full flight in a small room like The Bridge. Oils fans will remember Peter Garrett belting out a song on Victoria Road that big hand stopping the traffic. Those who were there will have indelible memories of these shows. Also, bands played under various guises such as v Spy v Spy as their alter ego The Drug Grannies. Not to mention many of the finest bass players, drummers, horn players and musicians that have graced the Bridge stage.
And amongst all this have been DJ’s, Comedy and even Pub Theatre shows such as He Died With a Felafel In His Hand to Shaun Angus Hall’s In The Bag to Shakespeare in The Pub.
So check out our abbreviated list of performers.
A big thank you to all the performers that have played at The Bridge and helped create this venue that is still standing 35 years on.
And of course to all the people who have come to see shows here and supported all forms of music over the years, thank you for the support. I hope the list of shows will bring back fond memories for you. But there is plenty more to come.