Welcome to Inside Lands. We’re a group of music fans who collaborate to support indie artists we know and love. Since 2016, we’ve been organizing live music parties featuring singer-songwriters and acoustic bands performing in living rooms and listening spaces around the San Francisco Bay Area.
As shelter in place orders keep us from gathering in person, our house concert series is on hold. After the pandemic has passed and we’re able to safely get together in groups again, we’ll be looking into ways to present backyard shows. To get an announcement when our shows resume, sign up for our mailing list through the form below.
Note: We are not affiliated with Outside Lands’ new online festival.
Do you sing and write songs? Play guitar, piano, mandolin, ukelele, cello or any other acoustic instrument? Join us for one of our Song Circle Music Parties.
They’re a super casual hangout. Musicians trading songs. Like an open mic without a mic. They usually happen around lunchtime and last for a few hours. Different locations and hosts each time.
If you’d like to join our next song circle, write me at drew at insidelands dot org and I’ll reply with the details.
Every month, my friends and I present acoustic music parties in homes and private listening rooms around northern California and the San Francisco Bay Area. 100% of the audience donations go to the musicians.
The fact that they don’t promote the names of the performers before the show underscores the belief that the platform is more important than the musicians.
It reminds of that stat showing how many millions of plays an artist would have to get on Spotify to earn the average salary of a Spotify employee. Same with the iPhone. Why do we value the machine that holds the music more than the human who created it?
Almost all of the hosts I know volunteer their time and open their homes to support the musicians who’ve been struggling to make any money from their recordings for the past 20 years. If we let corporations commodify the whole concept of community by taking over the house show scene, the musicians will suffer.
Let’s not let that happen, yeah? Let’s create a community that values the musicians first and foremost. Will you help me do that by coming to our shows and bringing your friends? Sign up for our mailing list and I’ll send you an invitation to our upcoming shows.
Q: How can I get involved in hosting a music party at my place? A: I love collaborating with other people who want to give songwriters a place to perform. If you have a place that can fit 40-50 people and would like to have me organize, promote and co-host a show at your home, send me an email and let’s talk about possible dates and artists.
Q: Are these music parties open to the public?
A: These are private parties, but you can request an invitation to any show by joining our mailing list or sending an email to drew at insidelands dot org.
Q: How can I get invitations to these gatherings?
A: Join our mailing list using the form on this page.
Q: Who gets the audience donations? A: 100% of the donations go to the performers or the charities at our benefit events.
Q: Is this a business? Are you a professional music promoter?
A: This is my hobby.
Q: Why are you doing this?
A: I’m a former performing songwriter who still loves hearing bands play in listening rooms and small venues where the audience is there to hear music, not to be seen in the scene. A lot of listening venues have closed, so my friends and I are doing what we can to create alternative venues.
Q: How can I get booked as a featured performer?
A: If you’re a singer-songwriter who’d like to perform at Inside Lands, introduce yourself in person at our next event. Most shows are singer/songwriters performing in the round. I lean toward San Francisco Bay Area acoustic acts that don’t need a PA. But I love being introduced to new music, especially if you play indie folk, chamber pop, or Americana rock.
I’m Drew Pearce, a singer-songwriter who loves hearing live music in listening rooms. As a former performer, I have great memories of places like the Owl & Monkey Cafe where small groups of people would gather to give their full attention to the music. When that venue closed, I kept looking for places that had the same kind of listening room vibe.
Back when I was a contributing writer for Acoustic Guitar magazine, I was assigned to write an article on house concerts. Hearing the hosts tell their stories inspired me to try hosting myself.
That was September 2001. I was living in a cottage in Healdsburg, far from my friends in the city. My birthday was two weeks after 9/11, and I didn’t feel much like celebrating. But I didn’t feel like hiding out at home alone either.
So I invited my musician friends up to my house for an impromptu music party. They brought their guitars, ukeleles, cellos, and djembes. We sat out on my porch and played under the stars. It was exactly what I need to clear away the pent-up dread in those strange, anxious days.
I still remember how cathartic the feeling of community was at that first “Porchapalooza.” It inspired me to keep trying to recreate that vibe on a regular basis. So I started devoting almost all of my free time to hosting house concerts.
Over the years, it’s given me a chance to meet a few of my musical heroes—Peter Case, Glen Phillips, Noe Venable, Gregory Alan Isakov, and many more.
I couldn’t believe my luck. Songwriters I’d heard on the radio for years were somehow suddenly playing in living rooms for small gatherings of my friends.
After trying to be a performing songwriter myself, stumbling into the role of house concert host felt like I’d finally figured out how to stay connected to music in a way that was meaningful and useful.
It felt like I’d found my proper place in the scene that I loved. Not on stage. But close enough to it that it felt like part of the action.
For me, the best moment at any house concert happens about halfway through the night when the banter begins. I don’t know whether it’s the wine kicking in or nervous energy wearing off, but you can sense when the artists and the audience realize there’s no stage separating them. They’re just people in a room together. It helps you hear the songs in a different way.
I think that was especially true whenever we presented songwriters “in the round.” Like those epic shows hosted by Heather Combs at Hotel Utah Saloon, you’d sometimes get to watch musicians who’d never met before sing harmonies on each other’s songs. Improvised collaboration. That’s something you don’t get to witness too much in a formal venue.
I missed the loose, chatty, party vibe of those first songwriters-in-the-round shows. I missed the camaraderie and community they created. And I missed feeling like I could do something to help shine a spotlight on the people I admired.
So I want to continue collaborating with my friends who want to co-host shows in their homes. I want to keep trying to gather people into those listening rooms. I want to organize acoustic music parties as often as possible.
If that’s your jam and you’d like to attend (or host a show at your place), follow our Facebook page and I’ll let you know when we’re gathering.
