Powderfinger’s singer-songwriter Bernard Fanning and guitarist Ian Haug, Custard’s Dave McCormack and The Grates’ Patience Hodgson will join current stars Ball Park Music, dance-punk trio DZ Deathrays and rising performer Tia Gostelow, who won Album of the Year for Thick Skin at the recent Queensland Music Awards. Singer-songwriter Thelma Plum, Busby Marou, Velociraptor frontman Jeremy Neale and singer-songwriter Sahara Beck will all jump on stage for special appearances throughout the night. And who knows what else might be added to the bill between then and now. Brisbane singer songwriter Sahara Beck to perform at opening of Brisbane Fortitude Music Hall The co-owner of the Fortitude Music Hall is former Powderfinger bassist John Collins who runs the Triffid in Newstead.

The Fortitude has been a labour of love for 'JC' and his business partners, including builder Scott Hutchinson, for almost three years. Largely the Fortitude has turned out as Collins imagined. “It has probably improved to some degree,” Collins said. Brisbane's DZ Deathrays at Small World Festival in Sydney Park, Alexandria. Saturday September 19, 2015. he trio will play at The Fortitude's opening night show in July. Credit:Rachel Murdolo “It is going to have a better finish than I imagined a couple of years ago,” he said with a laugh.

Collins, Hutchinson and their architectural design team in early 2018 headed to the United States in to look at venues. They looked at Philadelphia’s Filmore theatre and that was the model they kept in their heart. The first thing is that the Fortitude will not be a nightclub, Collins said. “It is a bit more like an old theatre-style way of looking at things,” he said. “We didn’t want it to feel like a nightclub so when you are playing on stage all you can see is this bar and all the bar lights.

The change came after visiting the Filmore, he said. “We learned a few things, like where they put the bar locations,” he said. “That changed our ideas. Which is good because we had a bar looking towards the stage. “Now we have a bar today which looks out towards the road (mall). “So you walk into the bar, then you walk in around the (main) bar to the auditorium.”

Stairs, on either side of the main bar, takes punters up the mezzanine level. Bernard Fanning to play the opening of Brisbane's new music venue, the Fortitude in the Brunswick Street mall. Construction is moving pretty quickly. The stage is almost finished. The curtain rail began to go in last week. The mezzanine level is almost finished and the finishing touches are being added throughout. The Fortitude’s website will be finished this week, but tickets to the opening show can be obtained from Ticketmaster here. As a 17-year-old Collins went to see the Go-Betweens play at one of the earliest Livid Festivals when they were held at the University of Queensland. He got a copy of the Saints’ (I’m) Stranded.

Then the city’s music scene grew and – amongst a swag of less commercially-successful bands – spawned Custard, Regurgitator, Powderfinger and Savage Garden. “I think the one thing that Brisbane has always had for me is that there is no one sound,” he said. “I mean you can still be a fan of both Regurgitator and Powderfinger. “It is not as though you were taught internally that you had to bat for one team. “You could just buy two records.