Press play. Music fades in, a technicolor logo lights up the screen. The characteristic 360-degree shot circles the stage, giving the audience a full view of the focal point of the next fifteen minutes. The camera comes to a stop, the virtual spectators settle into place, and a Pocket Concerts live session has officially begun.
The media project known for creating the Tiny-Desk-esque recorded sessions is bridging the gap between live music and accessibility during times of uncertainty. Jake Isom, Stephen Smith, Valerie Dalena, and Katie Schreiber are the hearts of the operation, the directors behind the Pocket Concerts performances. Dubbed the ‘creative core,’ the four individuals are responsible for the bulk of the production, from filming and editing to promoting the final product.
Publishing well-loved Bellingham acts such as Hockey Teeth and Analog Brass, Pocket Concerts has quickly risen to the forefront of the community with their short-form, high-quality content. To get a little bit more information about Pocket Concerts as a whole, BREAKOUT sat down with the four creators for a quick behind-the-scenes look at the project bringing live sessions home.
What was the motivation behind starting Pocket Concerts?
Jake: Stephen has a band called Stendhal, and they noticed that during the pandemic there was not a lot of opportunity for musicians to be able to share their music with an audience. So, we approached Valerie to start a collaboration to get some studio sessions out there that artists can share with their audiences.
Stephen: We were lucky to make the connection with the Firehouse studio, which is where we started shooting. They provided us with a space and a good framework to really be able to start platforming some artists.
Valerie: Katie and I had already been doing a lot of long-form music videos at the Firehouse. We had been doing it since pretty much the beginning of the pandemic, but they were established bands. I think a part of our frustration was that we really wanted to work with younger bands.
Stephen: Through that, we also discovered that we were providing a really great thing for a lot of these bands that are sort of very informal. Having a solid, well-produced example of their work, I think ended up being something really useful for the artists.
Jake: That’s one of the coolest things, is being able to provide a high-quality video and audio to our artists after the fact.
Who all is involved with Pocket Concerts?
Jake: It’s us four, Sam Thompson [on audio], and then for a while, we had another editor named Scout Powell.
Valerie: Teresa Dalton, who owns the Firehouse. And Jessyca Murphy, at the Make.Shift.
Walk us through the filming process of a typical Pocket Concert.
Katie: Lots of set-up.
Jake: So it starts with us getting there before the bands. We do a little bit of prep-work, try and get the lighting set up how we think it’s gonna be best. Sam starts getting the audio ready, plugging things into the snake recorder, and then about thirty minutes later, the bands will show up. We’ll kind of give them a run-down of what they can expect, you know, do a little sound-check with Sam, and then we start rolling.
Stephen: We do our signature 360 intro.
Jake: Then, we compile all of our footage. Whoever is editing the video for that week will go in and line up all the different clips from the different cameras, make their edits, do any color correction and lighting correction that they need to, all the while Sam is mixing and mastering all of the different audio segments that we captured at the performance. It’s a lovely combination when those two come together. Then it’s exported to YouTube.
How do you go about choosing artists to perform?
Jake: Pretty much it’s been word of mouth, like bands hearing about us and seeing our shows, and then reaching out to us mainly via Instagram. If there’s an artist that we see in the area that we haven’t had before, oftentimes we’ll try and shoot a message to them and see what their response is.
Katie: Something that’s cool too is the fact that bands are reaching out to Pocket Concerts. It’s a good indicator of the audience that needed a platform. There are so many talented bands in Bellingham in the underground scene, and I think this is a super cool opportunity for the bands to get some audio recordings and professional videos.
Jake: It just feels really special that all the artists and the music community here trust us with filming them.
How do you think the scene benefits from projects like Pocket Concerts?
Valerie: It’s really nice when stuff is just free and there on YouTube. I think some of these bands have a lot of potential to be bigger, and might even someday make it big, and we feel like it’s nice to help them get there. So if we really believe in them, it’s just fantastic to give them an opportunity.
What lies in the future for Pocket Concerts?
Jake: Definitely a lot more videos, we’ve got quite a few artists lined up and are excited to get recording more. It’s gonna be so fun, we’ve got a bunch of different genres coming in too, and I just feel like it’s gonna be a whole new fun wave of energy for our channel.
What has been your favorite Pocket Concert so far?
Katie: I really liked Sidney Amos. She talked about how she learned the guitar over the pandemic, and then wrote guitar-specific songs, and it was really cool to see her perform those. Anytime there’s an artist that’s playing a song that isn’t already on a platform like Apple Music or Spotify, it’s exciting.
Stephen: The Knights of Jamalot one was also great because it was our first full jazz group.
Valerie: Foxy Apollo was pretty special.