Balance CG was product to sponsor the PNW Live Stage – A Concert for your Quarantine livestream event. Recorded at the famed London Bridge Studio in Seattle, the event packaged 19 bands over five nights, streaming the sessions from March 27-31 @ 6 PM PDT. Watch all of the past events on the Dick’s Drive-In Facebook page.
Over the past month our way of life, including the experiences and everyday activities that we took for granted, have been fundamentally disrupted. While social distancing is necessary medicine, to flatten the curve and mitigate the impact of the pandemic on our most vulnerable populations and healthcare system, some segments of society have been especially hard-hit.
Artists, particular those in theater, music and performance art, depend on audiences and large gatherings for their income, to hone their craft and express their creative message. It’s been said that “a society that forgets art risks losing its soul.” Without avenues for artistic expression and experience, not only is society temporarily deprived of a fundamental part of our humanity, there’s a risk in the ability for many current artists to continue to pursue their passion and to inspire the next generation
An early casualty of the ‘social distancing era’ was the cancellation of SXSW. The annual festival of film, interactive media, music and conferences in Austin, Texas is both a launch pad for budding artists and innovation, as well as a crossroads where ideas, knowledge and experiences are exchanged.
Balance CG is a sponsor of one of the impacted SXSW venues, the Seattle Live Stage. For the past three years, Dick’s Drive-In has traveled to Austin to build the home-base for local Seattle brands and up-and-coming music acts to take a great leap of faith and showcase their incredible talent.
The cancellation of events like SXSW not only result in lost experiences for all of us, but in a significant loss in income for many struggling artists that are bootstrapping to follow their dream. Thanks to the Seattle Live Stage organizer Cre8ive Empowerment, Dick’s Drive-In, London Bridge Studio, and other Seattle sponsors including Balance CG, we’ve come together to ensure that the show will go on!
Each of our 19 bands was brought into the famed London Bridge Studio in Seattle, to record their set on the same hallowed ground as Seattle legends that have included Pearl Jam, Dave Matthews, Macklemore, Alice in Chains, and many more. In the age of social distancing and gatherings of no more than 10 persons, each set was recorded and produced by a skeleton crew, with 2 hours between each band and plenty of sanitizers and disinfectant.
The outcome was that our local artists received a paycheck, and all of us got to enjoy amazing performances over five nights!
In addition to pay for their performance, bands were provided with a full sound master from London Bridge Studio, all of the shots from the multi-camera production, and their sets were published across FB and YouTube. The final edition was published on Amazon Video as the PNW Live Stage 2020 with 19 episodes.
To maintain that music and conference feel, between each band set, there were thought-provoking and informative 15-minute fast panels, on relevant topics for the times we are living in.
While we can’t go back to the way things were at the moment, and we still have more social distancing and hardships to go through before we’re on the other side, we can all do our part to support our local businesses, artists and cultural venues. Through these trying and difficult times, there are many stories of communities coming together, even though we’re social distancing, and new platforms springing up that enable ideas to be shared, audiences to be engaged and for all of us to enjoy those experiences that make us human.
Catch all of the past livestreams on the Dick’s Drive-In Facebook page.
At Balance CG we’ve built our practice around turning dreams into reality. From assisting startups from ideation to proof of concept, to building and launching innovative applications for Fortune 500 companies. We’re a hands-on, boutique software development company that partners closely with each of our clients to iteratively and incrementally build amazing products. We live and breath agile. We know the latest technologies forwards and backwards. We build scaleable, forward-thinking solutions. Drop us a line and let’s get started on building the next great thing together!