Colorado Music Meet Up at Sunshine Studios Live

The inaugural Colorado Music Meet Up was hosted by Sunshine Studios Live on Sunday March 3rd. 2024. The event drew wide appeal and was attended by many Colorado Springs area musicians, performers, producers and other industry professionals. The meet up ran from 2:00 PM until 6:00 PM and featured  talks, panels and discussion on various topics encompassing the music industry. Mad Indie Media spoke with Reid Givens of Brittany and the Blisstones and one of the main organizers of this event about what inspired him to go after organizing such an event, how he felt about the first event, of what is hopeful to be a series of events, and what the future plans for the next Colorado Music Meet Up might be.

After relocating to Colorado Springs in July 2023, Reid and his wife sought to attend many open mics and while they enjoyed these events, they found little time to socialize with other musicians. After all it is rude to talk while someone is performing in most open mic settings. Originally intended to be a modest, smaller scale informal meet-up at perhaps a coffee shop, Reid teamed up with Anthony Scornavacco & Christina Corbitt of Sunshine Studios Live, an 800 cap indoor, 2400 cap outdoor venue and recording studio to pull-off the well-attended, structured event spanning 4 hours of discussions, workshops & presentations.

Presentations included:

• Mark Briody: Ins and Outs of Touring Europe & Having a song in a film
• Scott Wilson: Stage Craft, Don’t just stand there & Producing mistakes
• Christina Corbitt & Sara Vaas: Booking Panel
• Anthony Scornavacco: How to do Merch & Making Money as a Band: Is it even possible? (with Reid)
• Reid Givens: Sound, Level, Signal, Gain -What is all this really
• Phoenix Rose: Touring/Professionalism as a Band/ Communications
• Jeremy Garey: The Secret to Huge Guitar tones

Barb Dye, the president of CoMBO (Colorado Music Business Organization) also came out and gave a quick talk on the organization and stuck around to give a Q & A session.

All panelists and workshop leaders were volunteers. No one was paid. This was simply professionals sharing knowledge in their unique expertise. Sharing knowledge was a core value at the inspiration of this event.

“The music industry is made up of many distinct disciplines and skill sets, so it is very hard to even know everything you would need to be successful let alone be good at all of them. This makes the industry by it’s nature a place where you can only get ahead by collaborating and having strong relationships. This all starts with an artists local community, so it’s very important for events like this to allow people to get together, learn, and get to know one another. It’s so easy to feel a strong desire to compete in this industry, but that road rarely leads to lasting success, so we need to be intentional as a community to foster cooperation so that we can all get better, do better, and build a solid base for the future of the industry here.”

Said Givens. The value of collaboration was echoed in his panel discussion “Making Money as a Band: Is it even possible?” Co-hosted with Scornavacco.

There has been no announcement of a second installment of this event but the hosts hope to continue the event quarterly at Sunshine Studios.

Givens went on to say:

“It’s very hard for people to remember that we all had to hear every piece of advice, even and especially the stuff that seems obvious, for the first time. Someone is always where we used to be and need to hear the stuff we were told, especially in a town like Colorado Springs because there are new folks moving to the area all the time. It’s also important to remember that something that is easy or obvious to us is not easy or obvious to everyone and often the best workshops and talks are about the “basics”.”

Sunshine Studios Live has dedicated years to refining the art of hosting special events and is located at 3970 Clear View Frontage Rd, Colorado Springs, CO 80911. Sunshine Studios Live is available for a variety of corporate and personal events, photo and video shoots, and content creation. Follow Sunshine Studios on social media and keep your eyes peeled for the next Colorado Music Meet Up.

Stay up today with Mad Indie Media by entering your email address below. Listen to our playlists which are updated once a month! We want to hear your music, check out our playlists submission page. Keep in touch with us on Spotify, Instagram & Facebook!