For more than ten years, Artist Home has provided a community-oriented platform
for musical artists in the Pacific Northwest, creating one-of-a-kind festivals and
other music-oriented shows, some of them impromptu. They even create mini-
events within larger events. “We’ve become known as the anti-festival and the anti-
big experience,” laughs Artist Home’s Kevin Sur, “but relatively unknown artists
often get a huge amount of buzz when they appear at one of our events.” Many of
these events are relatively small-say, 300 attendees or so-and the Mackie®
Reach™ all-in-one professional PA system has proven to be a perfect enabler.
Some events, of course, are carefully planned, but they also are intentionally
flexible and invite magical surprises. For example, once a month throughout the
summer, Artist Home sponsors the Bonfire Series of outdoor shows, held after
sunset at a Seattle-area beach.
With their penchant for surprise events, the Artist Home team often doesn’t have
much time to put together a sound system. Thanks to the Reach’s flexibility, that’s
not an issue. “We did an outdoor music festival with about 3,000 people,” recalls
Sur, “but we also did a secret midnight acoustic show for about 100 people at a
barn a short walk from the festival grounds. With the Reach, it’s much easier to pull
off these special shows. It’s simple to use, and the artists can hear themselves
clearly with the Reach’s built-in EarShot™ monitoring system.”
Artist Home also promotes the four-day Doe Bay Fest on Orcas Island, which is so
popular that the best way to get tickets for the summer festival is to visit the island
the previous winter. “This year, the main stage shut down at 10 p.m.,” Sur relates.
“So I set up some tiki torches and a couple of chairs underneath an apple tree next
to the main stage, and by midnight about 400 people gathered quietly to see what
would happen. Prominent Mexican-American singer Edna Vasquez and Y La Bamba
singer Luz Mendoza performed a 90-minute set of ranchera music, and we used the
Reach to support their vocals. It was exceptional! The Reach’s sound was so
transparent that many people didn’t even realize it was there.”
Artist Home is determined to break the standard model of what a concert should be,
and the Mackie Reach makes that a lot easier. “We show people that you don’t need
permission to perform, you don’t need permission to ask people to perform, and
shows can happen anywhere,” Sur summarizes. “If you find an amazing setting, it’s
the perfect time to bring an artist in and do a show. With the Reach, we have a
high-quality, complete sound system that we can quickly and easily load in, set up,
use, and load out. The artists love it, and audiences enjoy the music and scenery
without looking at stacks of equipment. Reach is perfect for a lot of what we do:
unannounced, impromptu shows that blow people’s minds, where people fall in love
with musicians they never knew about before.”