THE EVENTS BEFORE ME
When I first took over the events at the Hot Springs, the music there had been going on for around a year. At the time, we had a reputation as being a solo acoustic and bluegrass venue, where the customer would get the same experience every time. I saw this as an opportunity to expand to different genres, to make it a truly unique experience on each visit.
HOW I DEVELOPED THE EVENTS
When I pitched the idea of varying up the event types and genres, the only stipulation I was given was “no heavy metal and no rap music.” With that in mind, I researched some local favorites and transformed the shows with those favorites, as well as similar non-local talents. After I got a hang of that, I developed the events into having themed months, holiday events featuring high school jazz bands, and more large-scale events.
MY RESULTS
Through research, planning, and coordination, I was able to transform the events into something that people sought out every week. I was able to increase the traffic to the events by over 68% from 2018-2019. We were on track to have a similarly successful year in 2020, with two months that posted similar numbers to the year before. But then, COVID happened.
COPING WITH COVID
COVID-19 caused venues around the countries to close down for an indefinite amount of time, and our stage was no exception. I rapidly found myself missing live music, and I quickly learned that a lot of local bands felt the same way. Because of this, I started creating live-streamed shows that the community could tune into for free. This ended up being a fun, cost-effective way to sustain the association between the Hot Springs and local music. Through teaching myself how to use OBS and mix sound/video on the fly, I was able to create a series of online shows that audiences tuned into almost every week. The bands loved the thousands of views their videos got, and I was happy to do it.