“ A healthy live music scene doesn’ t happen by accident,” Ms Faehrmann said.“ It relies on deliberate public policy that invests in young and emerging artists.”

While Western Sydney vastly outnumbers the rest of Sydney in population, she said there remains a“ huge disparity” between the west and other parts of the city when it comes to support and resources for young and emerging musicians.

One option, she suggested, would be giving local councils“ a greater share of, and say in, live music funding”.

Blacktown City Council currently has limited scope to fund individual musicians beyond small grants of between $ 2,000 and $ 5,000, available to a handful of applicants through its Creative Arts Fund. Last year, the fund allocated just over $ 45,000 to ten projects, some of them music-related. New applications open in March. The grants are designed for one-off projects, not ongoing gigs.

Blacktown Council’ s Curator of Performance, Veronica Barac-Gomez, acknowledges that music is often a secondary element at council-run events. The most recent example was the“ Blacktown Garage Party”, held last month as a farewell event for the Leo Kelly Arts Centre. The two-day program included design and arts workshops, photography, face painting and four music sets on the second day. This month, Council will host“ Summer Music at Elara Food Market” on February 14.

Ms Barac-Gomez said Council would

welcome greater support from the State Government.

“ There is a real appetite for music,” she said.“ We’ re finding that whenever we can hold music events, the community turns up.”

The Leo Kelly Arts Centre, located up the hill from the Kmart car park, has now closed as part of the Walker Group’ s redevelopment of the Blacktown CBD- a project similar in scale to Parramatta Square. A new arts centre is planned for 2028. In the meantime, Council’ s arts and music programs will continue across various alternative locations.

Lachie Pollard has loved drumming since the age of three. He received his first official drum kit at 11, ditched organised sport in favour of music, and was influenced early on by a drumming uncle. After work, he tours with the three-piece rock band No Bull, playing gigs in Sydney’ s inner west and regional centres.

Local venues in Western Sydney, he says, are unable to cater to the band’ s heavy rock genre.

While regional gigs- such as those in Dubbo, Woy Woy, Bomaderry or Coonabarabran- can pay quite well, often with accommodation included, a typical gig in Leichhardt or Newtown might pay $ 400 for the three musicians covering bass, lead guitar, drums and vocals.

“ By the time we’ ve paid for petrol and tolls, and paid the house sound engineer $ 100, I’ ll end up with about $ 15 in my pocket,” Lachie said.“ You can’ t survive on city gigs.”

Lachie Pollard playing in“ No Bull” last year.

Applying for council or State Government grants, he says, is often too bureaucratic to be useful.

“ As part of a social media generation, a lot of people my age and younger have very short attention spans,” he said.“ As soon as you have to jump through too many hoops, they’ ll just say,‘ I can’ t be bothered’.”

“ That’ s not to say we want things handed to us. But if the Government wants live music to be a big part of the culture, they’ ll have to help us out.”

Lachie believes there is a real risk that without support, original live music could die out within the next five years.

“ Because streaming is so popular and creating music on a computer is so easy now- without even learning an instrument- live musos might almost stop seeing the

point,” he said. As for his own future, Lachie remains hopeful.

“ If my life ended up where I could play music in really good venues, with good musicians, and actually make a living, I would do it,” he said.“ That would be the best life.”

At the time of writing, Lachie has stepped away from No Bull, following a recent marriage and a lack of spare hours. But the drum kit still gets a regular workout, in anticipation of more gigs in a less precarious future.

Part two in March: Dilemmas for music venues. The pitfalls facing young musicians in the Spotify and AI eras, rising costs, and the decline of radio and printed gig guides.