On way to bigger things
Web-based platform helps musicians play in nontraditional sites.
Chris Haynes of Maumelle is a big fan of Canadian singer-songwriter Dan Mangan’s music, so he follows him on social media. That’s how he found out about Side Door Access, (sidedooraccess.com) a Web-based platform Mangan and fellow Canadian Laura Simpson co-founded in 2017 that helps musicians and hosts connect to set up gigs easily, often in nontraditional venues such as houses and yards.
And that is also how Haynes, district sales manager at Ben E. Keith Foods, ended up with two upand-comers in the music biz — Kaina and Sen Morimoto — playing a concert Tuesday at his house on the banks of the Arkansas River.
After the Maumelle show, Kaina, a jazzy, soulful singer and first-generation Latin American based in Chicago, and Morimoto, a Japanese jazz musician, composer and producer also based in Chicago, will continue on to Austin, Texas, to play South by Southwest (SXSW), the huge arts festival held since 1987 in the Texas capital. From March 1322, SXSW will attract legions of the cultured and curious.
Some of the acts at SXSW stop in Hot Springs for Valley of the Vapors, a festival before the Austin event that was set up to attract bands on their way to Austin. They play in nontraditional venues such as houses and storefronts and often bunk in a host’s home. Side Door takes the idea further, making it a breeze for artists to set up smaller gigs on their way to larger ones.
This year for the first time, “Side
Door is partnering with SXSW to book curated tours for select SXSW artists. The campaign routes artists from their hometowns and will culminate with an official Side Door to SXSW Showcase in Austin, Texas,” according to the Side Door website. The Side Door Showcase will be held from 8 p.m. to 2 a.m. March 20 at Volcom Garden at SXSW.
The Arkansas River House is what Haynes is calling the Maumelle concert venue. It’s really home, though, for him and his wife, Ashley, along with their children, Griffin, 14, and Harper, 17, and two golden doodles (thus the allergens notification in the concert listing). The house is kid-friendly, with those 12 and under allowed to enter without paying the $15 ticket price. The house is not, however, wheelchair accessible and accommodates a maximum indoor audience of 50.
“I set my house up as an outdoor facility, but since it’s been kind of cold we’re planning on having it indoors,” Haynes says.
After hearing about Mangan’s new venture, Haynes checked it out and decided to register his house as a possible venue. Hosts and artists can sign up on Side Door for free. Hosts can search through a list of available artists, pick one and see if they are available for a certain date. Together they set ticket prices, and the host and artists negotiate a split for 90% of that, with 10% going to the service.
“He sent me, I guess, five or six artists [who] were traveling this route and then along with the dates that they would possibly need. We finally settled on Kaina and Sen. And it worked out,” Haynes says.
The Side Door Access platform is also working out, according to Chief Executive Officer Laura Simpson, its co-founder.
“Dan is a touring musician. And when he first started, this is how he gained his audience. He was doing sort of smaller, more intimate shows. And usually, it involves a host, somebody who is really interested in presenting music but not necessarily in it for the money. And so they would cut overhead costs in a lot of cases for the shows, and he would end up earning a decent take. The most important thing is those kinds of shows really feel better for everybody, for the artists, for the audience and for the presenter because usually, it means that they’re there because they’ve been invited directly,” Simpson says.
Mangan is based in Vancouver, British Columbia; Simpson in Nova Scotia. She had been working in the music industry for a decade but after having children she wasn’t going out to see live music as much as she would have liked.
“So I decided that I would start bringing shows into my house, and we started hosting as a family back in 2011,” she says. She and Mangan were put in touch through mutual friends, “and we just started developing this idea.”
The Side Door Access platform is widespread in Canada and is gaining ground in the United States. The Maumelle house is the only host in Arkansas at this time. There are venues in Washington D.C., Tennessee, Ohio, Missouri, Michigan, New York state, Virginia, North Carolina, Louisiana, Mississippi, Pennsylvania and Georgia.
“We have some venues that are signed up in Europe and the U.K. We have somebody who’s on the ground who actually works out of Amsterdam on our behalf. We’re sort of slowly building out different markets, but trying to do it with some care. It’s a big undertaking.”
Side Door gives hosts the option of keeping the show private and not listed on the website. Haynes didn’t go that route.
“So far, we’ve sold 24 tickets and the max is 50. And honestly, the max would be really pushing it for our house. So I’m hoping that it turns out to be in between 30 and 40 people,” Haynes says.