What we’ll see at Foo Fighters pop up venues as band creates Foo Town beer with Sydney brewery Young Henrys

On their current Concrete And Gold Tour of Australia, Foo Fighters have teamed with Newtown, Sydney-based brewery to create the limited edition 4% Foo Town beer.

There’ll be pop up bars in Sydney and Melbourne when the band hits these cities, which will also serve as Foo hubs for fans.

“We got a call from them in November,” Young Henrys CEO Oscar McMahon recounted to TMN.

“Their team had heard that we’d created beer brands for bands like You Am I, Dune Rats, Frenzal Rhomb, and we’re launching one for DZ Deathrays in a few weeks.

“The Foo Fighters were involved in every aspect of the production.

“We’d regularly send them ideas for the concept, the design and the ingredients, and they’d come back to us at each turn.”

The brewery team worked over the recent holidays to ensure the product was ready on time.

The Foo Town brew used barley and wheat malt as well as Australian and New Zealand hops.

Hollywood Hotel, in Surry Hills in Sydney will become Foo Fighters Hotel on Wednesday January 24, Thursday 25, Friday 26 and Saturday 27.

It will be decorated with Foo neo-classic photographs, while an upstairs section is open to the public for the first time for the all-ages merchandising section with hoodies, pens and T-shirts.

Who knows, there could possibly be endless music videos and a massive bright neon band logo behind the bar, as happened at the London pop up venue last year when they launched the album.

The Hollywood Hotel’s merch section is dubbed The Foo Fighters Lounge. It will operate until 10pm while the pub will operate later hours.

In Melbourne, the hard rock Cherry Bar on AC/DC Lane becomes the Fooie Bar on Saturday January 27, Sunday 28, Monday 29 and Tuesday 30.

There will be an installation on AC/DC Lane of Australian and international Foo street posters.

Inside, a back bar will host pre-gig merchandising also for limited opening times, while the rest of the venue will be transformed with Foo photos and memorabilia.

James Young, owner of Cherry Bar, told TMN that band-branded beer are strong sellers.

“When Iron Maiden released their Trooper beer with their mascot Eddie imprinted on the cans, we ordered 60 cases, figuring they’d last two days. They disappeared in twenty minutes!”

Both The Foo Fighters Hotel and The Fooie Bar will have cans as well as 25 kegs each, with each keg containing 50 litres.

The Young Henrys website will in coming weeks have updates on how other Australian cities can buy the cans.

The skateboard riding Oscar McMahon, formerly guitarist and singer in Hell City Glamours and now with The Persian Drugs, might be a successful businessman these days but still sports the rock and roll tattoos and jewellery look.

He explains Young Henrys choice of beer partners: “We usually work with rock bands who are industrious, self-driven and hard working.

“We’re all passionate here about music, and this is our way of contributing to the live music scene by supporting artists, tours and venues in whatever ways we can.”

The Foo Fighters kicked off their Australian tour last Saturday in Perth with a stunning show that came close to hitting the three-hour mark.

Highlights during the show included dedicating ‘Hero’ to a 10-year-old boy who was attending his very first gig, and bringing back into the set ‘Ballad Of The Beaconsfield Miners’ which Dave Grohl wrote after the 2006 Tasmanian mine collapse and included on the 2007 album Echoes, Silence, Patience and Grace.

In the meantime, as excitement grows, Concrete And Gold went up 17 weeks this week on the ARIA chart to #18.

The Greatest Hits collection has spent four years and two weeks in the Top 100, and this week stayed strong at #30.