If you were rock or metal fan visiting or living in Sydney between 2012 and 2022 then you would have ventured down the hallowed stairs of Frankie’s Pizza By The Slice and been overwhelmed by the smell of fresh delights and heard the buzz of contented punters, whether they be the office types popping in for a quick beer and a bite before heading home, or drifting in to catch the next installment of the magic that the venue would conjure in the fabled band room. One of the men charged with keeping that magic alive was co-owner & head of entertainment Jordan McDonald; rock n roll party planner, host, visionary, musician… the job titles seemed endless.
A member of Frankie’s World Famous House Band, Jordan is currently on the road playing with Tim ‘Ripper’ Owens, as well as continuing his work with Mi-Sex but it his new venture Nite Rite Entertainment that really has us hooked. Sydney is about to be blessed with a series of new music venues and Jordan is there at the rock & metal wheel to ensure it happens in the best possible way. This is fabulous news for bands and fans alike. Read on to find out more…
Sean: Jordan, how are you?
Jordan: Yeah, pretty good, mate. How are you doing?
Sean: Pretty well for a Friday here in Perth and looking forward to seeing you guys here on Monday with Tim ‘Ripper’ Owens.
Jordan: Unreal, yeah we are pumped man. We are a couple of shows in now and it is starting to feel really good.
Sean: The Melbourne review we received and published from Andrew Slaidins sounded incredibly impressive.
Jordan: That guy made us sound like the Ultimate Warriors [laughs].
Sean: I look forward to seeing the Ultimate Warriors on Monday then [laughs]. Judging from what I’ve been seeing and hearing, you have been an extremely busy man of late.
Jordan: Yeah, I have been super busy. I’ve been preparing for this tour for ages. The last run we did with Ripper, we only had a couple of weeks lead time and I kind of booked all of that stuff myself so it was a little bit of a race – when you are wearing two hats and doing the things behind the scenes and also playing then it kind of sucks, you know. And that is how it was last time, so its really cool to have Hardline Media organising the whole tour, so we have been able to sit back and enjoy just playing on these shows.
Sean: Great to see the show has managed to get around most of the country and to rave reviews.
Jordan: It’s a fun show to play and if the folks are digging it then that’s even better.
Sean: How did the connection with Ripper come about?
Jordan: This one came through my brother Joel. He had been involved is some gigs… and this will be going back ten years or so… there were these ACDC Orchestrated shows and they had various singers who flew in and Simon Wright, who played drums for ACDC through the 80s, and there was this tour in Australia where they had a live orchestra playing along to these ACDC tracks and as you know not just anyone can sit in and sing the Brian Johnson era so they had to really call on the heavy artillery on this one so Ripper came out to front those gigs and Joel was playing guitar and they formed a friendship from there really. They had done a number of tours dating back well before I joined in and joined the solo Ripper tours, so it all came from Joel. And since then we get together when we can and there has been a pretty cool musical rapport between us, so we try to do it when the opportunity arises.
Sean: I’ve not had the pleasure of seeing you and Joel play yet but I have seen Voya play a couple of times, the last was when Bad Moon Born visited Perth. Perth fans, grabbed your tickets for Monday if you haven’t already! Jordan, I couldn’t pass this chance to have a chat with you because there is so much you have done, and have planned for the future… but I have to talk to you about the magical Frankie’s Pizza, which I was lucky to visit a few years back when friends of mine from a band called Echo Del Tusker played there one night.
Jordan: So you made it to Frankie’s? [laughs]
Sean: I did indeed and I certainly felt a vibe that not many venues capture. It really was an amazing place but what was it about Frankie’s that made it so special?
Jordan: It definitely had the “anything can happen” aura about it. That is how I kind of used to feel about the place. It was a place where it could be an unassuming Tuesday night and Salyer walk in, you know. It had that kind of spontaneous magic, I think. I don’t know dude, I think if you tried to follow some sort of formula to make that happen again, it just wouldn’t. There was something in the walls of that place where amazing pinch yourself moments just happened all the time. It could be a bit of a foreboding proposition turning up to a late night rock venue in the middle of the CBD – it was a large capacity space and it was always loud and pretty full on and shit inside.
I always thought it could be a nerve-racking experience just to show up so we made a real effort to be over welcoming and maybe at that time in Sydney there was a lack of that style of hospitality. There seemed to be a kind of entitled and to cool kind of thing going on, you had to know someone to feel welcome kind of shit and I just really wanted to rewrite the narrative there and wanted everyone who walked through the doors to feel like they were your best friend so from the start the DNA of the place was to be so welcoming and it was conducive to community building. And that’s what happened really… people could visit once and feel like they were part of the family in Sydney. That was probably then main defining factor in the way of service style that we provided, but then all the shit around the edges, the amazing scenarios that would unfold and play out is one of things the place will be remembered for.
Sean: There was always great merch designs, and the smell of pizza was just mouth watering [laughs].
Jordan: [laughs] It was a cool spot to begin with. When we moved in it was a real shit hole. It was one of planet earth’s worst venues but it was underneath the CBD, it was expansive, it was big and then there was another even deeper secret hiding spot below that and we made a little space called The Fun Room, and that space built its own notoriety all on its own. It was kind of a “build your own adventure” thing there too… there was a lot of shit going on in that place.
Sean: One of the simplest of things that impacted me the most was the stage curtain, giving it that kind of Victorian playhouse vibe. You felt like a performance was about to take place. There was an air of mystery about who was behind that curtain.
Jordan: Exactly.
Sean: It was simple but so effective – I’m surprised more venues haven’t adopted that.
Jordan: It ain’t so hard is it. It’s awesome for the viewer but it also gives the bands that sort of rock star appeal rather than being completely exposed while they are getting set up, lugging their amps on stage with their butt cracks out [laughs] while changing the battery in their pedal or something. You can actually be presented properly.
Sean: Then of course there was the Frankie’s World Famous House Band…
Jordan: [laughs] Yeah.
Sean: Did I see you also did the live karaoke with the house band as well?
Jordan: Yeah, well before Frankie’s, my brother and I were in a band ages and ages ago. We did one US tour which landed us in a venue in New York City called Arlene’s Grocery and they had this iconic Tuesday and Wednesday night where they had this red hot band who would deliver a karaoke kind of gig and people would sign up and get up and sing, but the level was astronomical. I mean there were people getting up to sing who could have be the next new sensation. It was really well done and we sort of took that idea and stuck it in our back pocket and brought it back to Australia with us. We did a couple of shows with that karaoke format but when we opened Frankie’s, we were the house band and I kind of rehashed that concept.
We were all a bit stretched at the time so I built a band. It was like “that guy would be great on bass” and “that guy would be great on guitar” [laughs] and so it happened that way and we had this amazing comedian/MC who made it a real spectacle – his name is Dave Eastgate. He’s a motherfucker of a guy. So the house band and the karaoke thing were two separate entities and two different days of the week. That was something that was important at Frankie’s, we programmed things to different days of the week. Monday was always the house band, Tuesday the Karaoke, etc, etc… Sunday was the day we had a lot more flexibility to get super wild because you weren’t going to scare off the regular punter who had just finished word and wanted to slide in for a slice and a couple of beers and hang out for a bit and loosen the tie. Sunday was the night you would… the customers who were there Sunday night, they were the outlaws or the vampires [laughs]. They were the true alternatives so you could really turn up the dial on a Sunday.
Sean: Incredible to hear some of the insights of that place. But bringing it back to the present day once more you also play with Mi-Sex as well. I caught them here last time you were over with The Angels at Astor Theatre. Such a great night and the first time I had seen Mi-Sex. Fabulous set that night. Steve (Balbi) transforms into such a character, a real alter ego.
Jordan: You were there man? Cool cool. Yeah that was fairly recently. That was an amazing night. Fuck, I love the Astor. What a great venue.
Sean: It is a special space. Having seen Steve with Noiseworks, it was quite surreal to see him perform that frontman role where he real does take on a different persona.
Jordan: He’s great isn’t he?
Sean: I was stood there wondering is he wasted, is he not, is he acting? Fabulous stuff!
Jordan: [laughs] It’s so great. You see him pulling in the outfit and then he puts on the hat and it’s like something just switches on inside. But he is completely unpredictable when he is playing that character on stage. It is so fun to sit behind him a drive. He’ll just get up to mischief [laughs].
Sean: He gives off that Clockwork Orange kind of vibe.
Jordan: Exactly. He’s a really villain. He’s a fucking arsehole up there… of the best kind [laughs].
Sean: And I see Mi-Sex have been announced they will be at Mundi Mundi again this year too.
Jordan: Yeah, That’s always amazing out there in the wilds of outback Australia, so we are looking forward to that one. I might appear busy but there is always a bit of time between drinks. The kind of touring I’m doing now is Australian-style touring. It’s weekend warrior shit so your not sitting in a bus for long periods of time. It’s manageable man, it’s manageable. I make it more difficult for myself by drinking five times more of the rider than I should [laughs] but its all good.
Sean: Well, you have something new on the horizon which I’m sure will fill in the gaps and that’s the launch of Nite-Rite Entertainment. I’m excited to hear about this, as should Sydney music lovers because there is about to be another boost to the live music scene over there.
Jordan: It’s something that I didn’t plan. It was a beautifully organic set of circumstances where I was approached to help a bunch of operators to open a live music venue because it’s just something that I have done a couple of times now and I’ve had those connections and those touch points that are required to fill in the gaps between concept and reality. I just thought it was a one off and then it happened again when someone else asked me and I thought, “Jesus Christ, there may be a career in this” and so I formalised it under a company name called Nite Rite and this is what I am completely sinking my time, resources and passion into right now man. It’s been really rewarding, essentially opening new rooms in Sydney. So, really shortly there is going to be more spaces to play in for musicians and there are going to be new audiences for venue owners to welcome into their spaces. A lot of the time they are existing venues that want to start live music but don’t know how to go about doing it so I’m essentially connecting the dots and once the rooms are open I’ll be programming them – all I really know how to do well is hard rock & heavy metal so there is going to be a whole lot more of that in Sydney, Australia really soon.
Sean: Exciting times for rock & metal fans in Sydney. We’ve seen venue closures, like many cities across the country, and it is heart breaking to see the already limited spaces become more scarce.
Jordan: That’s never nice to hear. But you know what? There is normally a silver lining somewhere, its just not apparent immediately but somewhere down the line it is there waiting – I thought it was the death nail for me personally when there was this forced acquisition of Frankie’s Pizza. You know I thought that place was going to last forever – the dream was dead but then you realise the door closes and another is going to be kicked open on the other side. It sort of forces you not to get lazy and it forces fresh ideas and creativity.
Sean: Well there is something pretty special kicking off on March 7 I believe called Dingbats.
Jordan: Yeah, with Dingbats, the idea there is that there is this space, and I have been working with the venue who have this amazing basement underneath their existing venue. This venue is beautiful. Its kind of like a big super club kind of R’n’B cocktail vibe which is great for what it is but Once I checked out this space below it was like I had taken a time machine back to 1987 – it’s such a great unused… red neon, dimly lit and just stinks of debauchery and I was like lets road test this room but putting a real rock n’ roll club in here and we will treat it like a pop-up so once a month we’ll do this rock club, I’ll program the living shit out of it with a lot of great up and coming bands and some surprise acts and stuff like that, just to kind of announce the room. Then once that is launched and out there and people have familiarised themselves with the space I’m going to be booking the room for promoters… it’s 250 – 300 capacity ticketed room that really has a massive vibe so I am really excited to be expanding on the current options that are out there on the Sydney touring circuit with this room. It is going to be sick man.
There is another one we are about to open too…we are going to be formally announced in the next week or two called Chuck Trailers, which is also underground and also in the CBD but this is going to be free entry, which is a vibe that I am really familiar with and really, really love because it is accessible to everyone. And that is a 110 capacity in the band room so it will be quite intimate but it has got a massive vibe and a 4am license every night of the week and we will be rockin’ and rollin’. You know, six months ago there was nothing like that on offer in Sydney but now there is about to be a couple of options like that just around the bend. So it is a really exciting time to be in Sydney.
Sean: Where is the best place to find and follow you?
Jordan: Dingbats is the best place to start and tickets are on sale for the launch. The date is March 7 and it is the night before Knotfest here in Sydney so we are sort of expecting a whole bunch of interesting characters to be passing through the room that night, which will be really really cool. I guess the HQ for all this information would be on my Nite Rite website (HERE) but Instagram (HERE) is where you are going to get the latest stuff. That will be the central hub for all the information being poured out to the punters.
Sean: Jordan, I really appreciate your time between shows and so excited to hear what Nite Rite has in store. It gives me a reason to head over to Sydney later this year to catch a night at one of these new venues.
Jordan: It’s an absolute pleasure man and yes you must! [laughs] Look forward to catching up on Monday night in Perth.
Sean: Thanks mate.
