This past weekend, the owners of The Last Chance Rock & Roll Bar in Melbourne officially lodged a bid to buy the Tote Hotel, after raising over a million dollars in a pledge campaign to buy the iconic live music venue.
Shane Hilton and Leanne Chance – partners of 15 years who co-own and operate The Last Chance – have been fighting tooth and nail to save the Tote, a Naarm institution and one of the most historic music venues in Australia.
“Live music is worth fighting for,” Hilton tells NME, “and whether we win or lose, we’re 100 per cent committed to that fight.”
After being hit particularly hard by the pandemic, Tote co-owners Jon Perring and Sam Crupi were in financial shambles, struggling to pay employees and book gigs. They’d long been seen as saviours of the city’s ever-booming live music scene, rescuing the venue from closure themselves in 2010 – but at the start of this year, Perring and Crupi found they’d lost the steam they once had. On March 1, they officially put the Tote up for sale.
Set in the bustling heart of Collingwood, the Tote’s 665m² block is prime real estate for urban development. With a valuation of $6.6million, the only types able to afford it, as Hilton and Chance saw it, are more than likely to knock the venue down and stick a high-rise in its place. As one of the most epochal halls in the live music capital of Australia – where everyone from Silverchair to Amyl And The Sniffers cut their teeth – the loss of the Tote would be a serious blow, not only to the city’s music scene but the entire country’s.
So on March 8, Hilton and Chance launched a pledge campaign to purchase the Tote, asking for $3million from crowdfunding and scratching up the rest from Last Chance earnings, personal savings, loans from friends and family, and enough debt to swell the already-puffy bags under Hilton’s eyes when he mentions it. The effort seemed ambitious at first, but the Pozible campaign raised $1million in a week, with the total pledged currently standing at just over $1.4million less than a month ahead of its end date of May 6. “I’m in awe at what the community has done,” Hilton says. “It’s insane – even if we [fail], this has probably been the most phenomenal thing I’ll ever do in my life.”
Though he’s on the brink of burnout and hasn’t slept properly in over a month, Hilton beams with affection for the Tote. He’s wanted to run it since he was 16, and 23 years later he could not only operate it but also turn it into Australia’s first community-owned venue.
It’ll be a long process, he says, but one he’s staunch on seeing through: “Because we’re taking on a lot of debt to purchase [the Tote], that portion has to be owned by us, but any money outside of that will be owned by a unit trust. We’re hoping that as we pay off those debts, we’ll be able to funnel in[to the trust] that remaining amount, and eventually the building itself will be 100 per cent owned by the trust, which will continue to operate the Tote as a live music venue long after we’re gone.”
Hilton’s conviction to saving the Tote, he says, comes down to his belief that “it’s not the building’s walls that need protecting, it’s what happens within those walls”. He expounds: “I’ve always championed the fact that live music venues are community spaces, and they’re places to celebrate creativity.”
Looking around The Last Chance, that ethos is palpable: the walls are stamped with Polaroid photos, structural pillars are adorned with vintage guitars, and the roof is lined with skateboards, shoes and other random oddities – all sourced from the community. Hilton envisions a similar facelift for the Tote, wanting its interior to reflect “the past, the present and the future” of the bands and punters that made it so iconic.
He stops short of revealing his full vision, but one crucial part is a wall honouring those helping him and Chance bring it to life: all donors who pledged $500 and above will have their names enshrine within the venue. So far there’s a little over 900 on that list, some 760 being “life members” – donors of at least $1,000 (and in the case of 12, $10,000) earning a kind of legend status at the Tote. Perks include having your name tattooed on Hilton’s body – “I’ve gotten 70 of them done so far,” he says with a nervous chuckle.
Among those life members are Australian rock royalty: Magic Dirt’s Adalita, Tim Rogers, Ben Lee, Private Function, C.O.F.F.I.N. Hilton is “absolutely overwhelmed” by how many artists have championed the cause. Amyl And The Sniffers have been particularly huge supporters: “Not only have they signed up as a band,” he says, “they all signed up individually as well. Amy was one of the first people to know what we were doing, and she’s been the first person to offer a hand with anything. She’s been phenomenal.”
The Tote is expected to change hands in June. Hilton is “not allowed to say” what figure he and Chance offered in their official bid, but he’s optimistic it’ll make it through the arduous process of negotiations. Should they succeed, he and Chance will share duties running both the Tote and The Last Chance in tandem, with all of the former’s existing staff kept on the books. They aren’t fazed by the prospect of doubling their workload: “We like the work,” Hilton says. “When you do what you love doing, it doesn’t seem like work. It can be pretty stressful at times, but the satisfaction we get out of this life is sky high.”
Hilton knows that devotion works in his and Chance’s favour, noting how they’ve established “a really good reputation in the live music industry for giving it everything [they’ve] got”. And he’s not willing to compromise on his vision, swiftly shutting down the prospect of linking up with an investor.
“Investors usually invest to make money,” he says, “and we’re not doing this to make money. We want to protect the Tote forever, and we can’t do that if in 10 years, someone walks through the door and says, ‘Alright, I need a return on the investment I’ve made.’ The building itself shouldn’t be there to get us paid a dividend, it should be paying dividends to the community. And it does that by being a creative space where people can be themselves and make a lot of noise doing it.”
The Last Chance Rock & Roll Bar’s campaign to save the Tote runs until Saturday May 6