Also known as: Southern Blues Club
Location: 198 Madras Street, Christchurch City Centre
Current Status: Demolished — building removed December 2010 following September 2010 earthquake
Active as a live music venue: 1980s – 2010
History
The Southern Blues Bar developed from a musicians’ club established in the 1980s by a group of Christchurch blues enthusiasts. Initially membership-only, the club catered exclusively to its founding members before eventually opening its doors to the public as a commercial venture. The conversion retained the venue’s identity as a musicians’ hangout, and it operated under both the name Southern Blues Club and Southern Blues Bar throughout its existence.
By the 1990s the bar was thriving, drawing a genuinely eclectic crowd to its Madras Street premises. It had secured a 24-hour licence on the basis of its musicians’ club status — the argument being that working musicians need somewhere to relax after finishing late-night gigs, and conventional licensing hours don’t suit that lifestyle. The arrangement gave the Southern Blues Bar a reputation as one of the few places in Christchurch where the night never really ended.
The venue attracted international blues headliners alongside local talent. American harmonica player Charlie Musselwhite, one of the foremost figures in Chicago blues, performed there, as did Robert Lockwood Jr, a pioneering Delta blues guitarist who had played alongside Robert Johnson. That a room of this scale in Christchurch was booking artists of this calibre spoke to the Southern Blues Bar’s standing in the wider blues community.
Thursday nights were given over to jam sessions, a format that had its roots in the original club’s mission to encourage shy but talented members to perform in public. Over the years, Thursday jam nights became a Christchurch institution in their own right, fostering a generation of local musicians — including students from Hagley Community College’s music programme — who used the open stage to find their feet. The clientele on any given night might include bikies, librarians, touring musicians passing through, and regulars who’d been coming since the club’s founding.
The Southern Blues Bar catered to the really late-night crowd, having obtained a 24-hour licence on the basis that it was a musicians club — and musicians go out to relax after they finish working, late at night. The clientele included everyone from bikies, to local musicians, to librarians.
Christchurch City Libraries Blog, Auf Wiedersehen Southern Blues Bar, 2011
The September 2010 earthquake proved fatal for the building at 198 Madras Street. The structure sustained damage that made it unviable, and the Southern Blues Bar was demolished in December 2010. An attempt to continue the legacy under the name “Southern Blues Bar Revisited” at the Sandridge Hotel was organised but ultimately cancelled. The bar remains one of the most mourned losses from Christchurch’s post-earthquake demolition wave.