We’ve previously covered how hard it can be living as part of the musical 99 percent. While the U2s and Taylor Swifts of the world live in the lap of luxury, things are much tougher for the vast majority of professional musicians.

Most musicians struggle to even turn a profit from their music. This is a fact that LostBoys, a cafe located in Brisbane’s foremost musical hub of the Fortitude Valley, is intimately aware of and they’re actually doing something about it.

As The Music reports, in the interest of feeding the starving artists, LostBoys is offering free food for visiting touring acts. Not just table scraps, either, but fresh, vegetarian, vegan, local, organic, sustainable food.

“We just started it this week, actually, so we’ve basically contacted venues around Brisbane that have bands generally touring through them, and thought it would be a good opportunity to help in a way that we can,” LostBoys owner Pixie told The Music.

“Financially, we can’t really do much when it comes to music, and music’s something that myself is really passionate about, and most of our staff are musos or involved in music in some way, so we’re all on the same page about it.”

“I’ve worked pretty closely with a lot of friends and family who have been musicians, and it’s been a bit of a struggle at the best of times, especially financially, so if we can support a touring band with a free feed to come and have brekky or dinner or something… everything makes a difference.”

Pixie says she was inspired to look into the ways she could assist struggling touring musicians having had first-hand experience watching musician friends who found what we normally think of as “success”, but who still struggled to make ends meet.

“Most of our staff are musos or involved in music in some way, so we’re all on the same page about it.”

“I’ve had some friends who have been very successful in the music scene, gone on tours, they’ve gone on Warped Tour, and to the outside world have been this really great, successful band, but I know that they’re struggling, and it sucks,” she said.

“I couldn’t help, I couldn’t support them through cash, so I was giving them some free food, and I was like, well, there must be so many musos out there who are seemingly doing well, and absolutely doing well, but financially it’s so tricky to make money in the music scene at the moment.”

“So I guess that’s the biggest way that we can input into their time here.” LostBoys are now working tirelessly figuring out the logistics of how their generous new initiative will work and how they can keep it running in the long term.

“Basically, how we’re envisioning it working at the moment is, just say a band’s coming and they’ll be here from, say, Thursday through to Monday; we’d just need to be contacted by someone — the venue manager, their manager, even a member of the band themselves,” Pixie explained.

“Just to say, ‘Hey, we’re this band, we’re going to be here from this time to this time, there’s four of us, we might be popping in.’ So there’s not really like a, ‘you have to tell us what time you have to be here’, because I know that the nature of most creative people is.”

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“It’s just having a bit of regulation in it somehow — it has to be for bands that are on tour, we unfortunately do have to draw a line — so it is bands that are on tour, coming through Brisbane, and it is to help them throughout their tour if they’re strapped for cash. And, it’s a healthy meal!”

Pixie said that initial response to the initiative, which is still in its infancy, has been positive and that she’s less concerned with generating publicity for LostBoys than simply helping Australia’s travelling musicians.

“The people that I have contacted have all been pretty open to it and all been really happy to pass it on, so if we can support them in any way we can, that’d be great,” she said.

“We don’t expect anything in return; obviously, if they like it and post on Instagram about it, that works for us too… but, I mean, it’s about helping those guys out how we can.”

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