More than 250 artists, 45 venues – is this the most live music you can hear at a one-day event?

One evening in 2014, Music and Booze Co’s Jack Rule and his team decided to put a wild idea to the test. They would crawl the length of Newtown’s King Street, order one drink at each venue and try to convince them to become part of a single-day event crawl.

“We didn’t even make it up the full street,” Rule admits. “I think our sales pitch got better and better as we had more drinks.”

What started with about 50 bands more than a decade ago at the first King Street Crawl has transformed into a beast. On Sunday, more than 250 artists and more than 45 venues will be part of what Rule believes could be the most musical acts to play in a single-day event in Australia.

“Every time I put the poster out each year, and it gets bigger and bigger, everyone’s like, holy shit, that’s a lot of acts,” Rule says.

All events and gigs are free to RSVP, except for the Enmore Theatre’s. Showcasing various genres, revellers can tailor their crawl to their musical taste – whether it be pop, dance, hip-hop, rock or jazz – hopping between venues from early afternoon until the early hours of Monday.

The crawl’s venues start at Hermann’s Bar near the University of Sydney (up the City Road end of King Street) and extend all the way down to Marrickville’s Mixtape Brewing and Bar.

For Sydney band G.U.N., participating in the event feels surreal. It will be the first time they’ve experienced the crawl as musicians rather than hospitality staff in Newtown.

“I wish a younger version of myself could go back now and give me a hug and a ticket to my show. It’s really cool,” band member Nat Dick (Dick McQueen) said.

“It’s like every single subgenre, every different group, all these bands I’ve never heard of, and a bunch of people that I have heard of, all get like put on the same day.”

Fellow band member Frxci Murphy likened the crawl’s atmosphere to Mardi Gras or New Year’s Eve in Sydney. “It has that mixture of being in a familiar place, with pubs and bars you go to, but then it’s also got that festival vibe … walking around the streets, bumping into people that you know.”

DJ Edward Macdonald, known by stage name Human Movement, is the closing artist at the crawl’s only ticketed event at the Enmore Theatre. He says the fact that the event began during the lockout laws and survived the pandemic was a “testament to the culture in Sydney”.

“These public events and spaces are being used for these cultural and beautiful events which are creatively fulfilling for our community, and our community do get so much out of them … the fact that this has been happening for 10 years now – it’s getting bigger and bigger every year – is a testament to the Sydney community.”