Bathurst musician Cletis Carr has found renewed purpose with the local music scene

But while he's only lived in Bathurst the past couple of years, Carr is already quite familiar with the region, having lived in the Blue Mountains for several years and performed many gigs in the Central West.

After a number of years overseas, Carr returned to the region in the late 2010s, where he managed the music store in Lithgow for a time, before music brought him to Bathurst in 2019.

"I came to Bathurst for a music-related opportunity, which I soon found wasn't going to work out the way I wanted, but before I could decide my next move, COVID hit," Carr said.

"Like so many others, I was floating through life and waiting for the dust to settle, and when things started to look up, I had the opportunity to move somewhere else or take stock of what was happening here.

"As I had a lot of friends here, new and old, and had started working with a lot of local venues and organisations to get more live music out this way, it soon occurred to me I was where I needed to be."

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Originally from Portland, Oregon, Carr has spent much of his life in and around music, where he got to travel the world and meet some of his heroes, and he says he's reached the point in his career where he's ready to share his expertise with emerging artists in regional areas.

A number of memorable life events have contributed to Carr's expertise.

"There's a lot of stories: opening for acts such as Tom Petty and Huey Lewis, getting punched out by Joan Jett, watching Elvis Costello have a complete breakdown on stage and trash his gear and helping a very drunk Richie Sambora out of the Rainbow Bar and Grill in Los Angeles," he said.

"But I'm not famous, I was just lucky enough to be around people, and I'm now at that point where it's my responsibility to give back to younger artists who are trying to get somewhere with their music."

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As a solo artist, Carr has, to date, released nine studio albums, with a tenth in the works, as well as a number of albums with Sneakers [his original new wave band from Oregon], Big Whiskey and Hillbilly Moon [with Rose Tattoo founder Pete Wells].

But he said the process of making albums is very much a passion project these days.

"There's no money to be made off albums these days, as people don't buy them, and with Spotify paying only .003 cents per stream [$3 for 1000 streams], it's a stark contrast to the days where you'd get paid around $1 every time your song was played on a major radio station," he said.

"Back in the day, people would tour at a loss in order to sell their albums, and now we're in a situation where people give their music away for free in order to get fans to buy tickets to their gigs and purchase merchandise.

"Its transformed from an act having a few hit albums into an act going viral on TikTok or YouTube for a few months before disappearing off the face of the Earth."

Carr said he's pleased to see so many venues across the Central West, and Bathurst in particular, start to value live events again, particularly with a number of venues doing away with their gaming licences.

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"In the 1990s, I was amazed and dismayed to see the shift in NSW pubs where they'd start to become everything to everyone," he said.

"You'd walk into a pub, and there'd be someone playing music in a corner, 10 screens with 12 different games on, the Keno, the TAB, the bistro...it was like a circus.

"I think the tide might start to change coming out of COVID, as publicans are starting to see the benefits in ticketed shows where entertainment is over before midnight and there's a lessened risk of drunks running amok at 3am and causing a hefty security bill; there's ways to make it work."

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