Silverlake Jams
Los Angeles Pop-up Concert Series
Architecting belonging into the Los Angeles DIY music scene.
A unique pop-up concert series that feels as if you’re walking into an old friends kickback meets professionally produced event.
In just 12 shows we’ve:
Hosted over three dozen independent musicians and over 1,000 guests
Sold out 90 seats within 24 hours for each of our 12 events with a $0 marketing budget
Built relationships with LA Mag reporters and started a growing IG page to build organic marketing traffic
Partnered with local CPG brands to provide sponsored beverages
Built a tight-knit, warm community that feels as though you’ve stepped left LA and that empowers people to come alone because the expectation is always that strangers will become friends.
LA Mag wrote an article about us! Click above to read it.
Continue onwards for an even more in depth break down :-)
Silverlake Jams was born out of a desire to connect people, amplify local artists & businesses, and create a magical world of unparalleled belonging that inspires people to return - with all of their friends.
It began when I moved to LA with no community, no artist credibility, and no real place to be - and a desire to have all three.
As a new musician, I was surprised that there weren’t more inclusive places to perform for unestablished artists (although it was summer 2021 mid pandemic). After waiting a few weeks to meet the right people, I decided the only way to meet good people and reliably get somewhere was to host the kind of events that I’d leave home to go to. The best way for me to perform, build supporters and exposure and meet the artistic community ASAP was to create a venue myself .
The first silverlake jams was 7 weeks after we’d moved to LA. Challenge accepted. I marketed it via cool flyers around the neighborhood, individual texts to every person I’d met since moving here and a few instagram posts, and crossed my fingers that people would actually show up… and when we opened our patio door, we had 70 guests stream in. That night, we had to turn away people and the newly created instagram got so many unrelated followers, that Instagram suspended the account because it thought we were using a fake bot service. Here is when we realized this was a need that spanned far beyond the large hole in our own lives.
Identifying the Gaps, the Demographic + the Marketing
There seemed to be consistency gaps in live music events in LA:
Community focused so it’s warm, welcoming & inclusive
No egos
A music experience that doesn’t cost $$
A place to meet cool & interesting people
An intimate listening venue for for my own music + new friends music to reliably connect with people and make new supporters
So in order to achieve the above, there needed to be a focus on meaningful connections & community. It needed to be an event that was a balance between a professional acoustic set and showing up to your old friends backyard kickback. This translated to…
Dinner + drink sponsors included
A BYOB entrance fee to avoid overtly transactionalizing the experience
Texted information 24 hours before the show via a google form exclusive signup
Upon entrance, feeling like you belong and you are wanted there (genuinely excited to see guest + instruct that everyone has come alone and/or ready to make new friends
Priming people with expectations to meet new friends
Public Thank YOU!s throughout the show to - musicians, guests, team of friends who helped set up and run the event, MC, Photographer + neighbors
Design the event structure so it’s bookended by hang out time to spark connections between people
Respect neighbors and shut down the gathering by 11
Great, now who would actually want to attend a warm cozy intimate backyard showcase like this?
23-35 year old demographic primarily
Musicians, music industry folks & people who enjoy live music
Silverlake neighbors/east LA residents who don’t want to drive far or at all for a good time
Those who miss the local music scene, home gatherings & backyard shows
Those who miss the experience of seeing acquaintances and meeting new people at these gatherings
OK, so where do we find them?
Social media?
Ads? (tbh I don’t believe in investing $$$ into IG ads versus other means for this type of community driven event and desired outcome, but I tried it with our first poster anyway just to see. My ad was only $10 but the results were less than spectacular for even that. Repeating it with a curated video hook may produce better results, but I prefer word of mouth or discovery methods)
Personal posts: shared it on my personal social media, and created an IG for people to follow at the very end of the show to keep up with future shows and continue WOM
Posters at high traffic ideal demographic area
we happen to live right next to a huge walking hub for people in East LA, the silverlake reservoir and the dog park attached. It’s a loop around the lake with perfect opportunity for repeat signage on telephone poles and electrical covers as people go on their walks… and repeat signage on every fence door as they walk into the dog park and walk out. This discovery method had 20 people our first show, aka 28% of our interested base.
Friends of friends
We invited friends and inevitably they asked to bring +1s or just shared it with friend groups or on their social media, so we had handfuls of fresh faces from this method too.
Word of Mouth
After the first shows success, we had WOM travel via instagram stories and postings (0 to 50 followers the first night) and real WOM, dozens of people began reaching out about future shows information and bookings.
The Results:
Show 1 (August): 70 people (expected a few blankets + 70 people showed up)
Show 2 (September): 50 people (intentionally smaller show for photographer movement + 10 people flaked day of)
Show 3 (October): 70 spots were reserved within 24 hours with a growing dozens of spots on the waitlist
Show 4 (December): 80 attendees, a team of volunteers producing the show including a Disney videographer, a photographer, and a lot of excitement.
Show 5:
Show 6:
Show 7:
The Key Components
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Marketing
Part 1 was creating a poster from a information and design standpoint. @ArtSwee, a talented graphic designer, designed the poster to align with our intented vibe.
Part 2 was figuring out how to target our demographic?! (above)
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@SilverlakeJams
Originally the poster pointed interested guests to contact us via a google voice number, but we quickly realized this mode was not sustainable for a number of reasons. 1. It was difficult to manage and more so to scale 2. There was no was to showcase the event in a centralized media format besides on IG. So we instead moved the communications from “text this number for location” to “DM @SilverlakeJams for info”.
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Aesthetic
Aesthetic is secondary impressions after whatever first the guest is introduced by, and therefore sets the scene. We are lucky to have a beautifully serene and quiet oasis of a backyard already with succulents & a banana tree fenced in and private. We added string lights, created stage spotlights, paper lantern lights, and moved all of our furniture out to increase capacity and replace chairs with $100 of curated goodwill rugs, blankets and pillows for a cozy and equalized effect. Everyone sits on the floor, eats the same food & drink and listens to the same musicians. In a city that is built on stardom and celebrities, this event aims to counter the conventional vibe with a cozy warmth & intentional elimination of hierarchy.
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Vibe
The goal was to find a balance between being welcomed into an old friends backyard vibe with planning, org and logistics of a professional event. This meant that every part of the aesthetic, the event structure, the messaging, the lines from the doorman and MC, and the roles the team played all should align with this.
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Team
A group of generous friends volunteer to help run the doors, serve food, photograph, be ‘social butterflies’ to float around to make sure no-one is uncomfortable or lonely, & break down set. They’re instructed by the goal to lean into themselves and be goofy, warm & welcoming.
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Food & Drink
Food is as universal a language as music, and a key element to making a stranger feel at home. We cater Indian food because it’s economical and delicious when made in mass.
Drinks we get sponsored by local beverage companies. They are less economical for us to buy, but just as important. Partnering with local brands gives us stronger ties to the community, significantly less expenses, and creates more legitimacy as a professional event.
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Strategy
The strategy for Silverlake Jams was a difficult enigma for a while. It currently stands 3-fold. An event to create exposure & supporters for my own music, an event to build and elevate the community of musicians and artists around me, and a playground to test different event ideas to gain a further understanding of events structure & variables as I continue to develop my skills in the field.
