Even after it was decided live music could be enjoyed in a safe manner, many cities and/or venues have continued to hold back all across the country. It took five attempts to find live music when I was in Northern Indiana a few weeks ago. And I’ve heard from friends in other states who say there’s nothing going on where they live. The Peoria area is blessed to have so much talent and support for that talent and I’m excited that there is still so much going on every week!
You might see the following billboard around town, reminding people of that fact. And possibly on a few digital billboards in Bloomington, Davenport, and a couple northern cities as well.
There is still so much happening in the Peoria area, that we have several other events to keep an eye out for as well!
In the next week or so I will be introducing Peoria Music Live’s Fall Intern from Bradley. I’m looking forward to having a little help with what we do, but am also interested in the new ideas and perspectives having an intern can bring.
We also will have two contests coming up in the final months of 2020 that I wanted to give everyone a heads up about so there will be plenty of time to prepare if you want to take part!
We know how much people love stickers because, well, we love stickers. With 2020 drawing to a close, it’s about time to design the sticker for 2021.
We will be having a contest for the art for the 2021 PML Live Music Supporter sticker! While I designed the 2018 sticker myself, the 2019-2020 sticker included the beautiful photography of Joshua Rhoades and some help with graphics from Elise Kingland of Blue Heron Graphic Design. I love it so much!
There are no official rules or dates in place yet, but those will be decided soon, so I’d love to get artists thinking about it ahead of time. We will most likely want to stick with the “record” theme from the last two stickers (both were round and, in some way looked like the vinyl we all love.)
This will be free to enter and there will be a cash prize to the winner, and possibly runners-up, although how much and how many hasn’t been determined yet.
I love that we will be able to showcase local talent to so many people and find the right design too!
Another thing I love is supporting original artists and getting their music out to more people.
So, a little later this fall, we’ll also be holding a Peoria Music Live Originals Competition. Artists will be asked to submit any video they’d like of a performance of one song. We are planning to have separate categories for Acoustic and Full Band performances, and each band/artist can send any single camera, non-professionally produced video they’d like. (Although I’m open to having that as a separate category if there are enough people who want to submit those as well.)
There will be a cost to enter this competition, with proceeds going to help support Peoria Music Live. But it will be small and we’ll make sure the benefits and prizes outweigh the costs. We may also have some room for sponsors on this one, but we’ll see how it goes as it gets closer.
In the meantime, I want artists to have time to decide what song they want to submit and get a video of themselves performing it in one of their favorite venues. (A video recorded at home is fine as well.)
Looking forward to seeing you out enjoying live local music… for many of us, the benefits far outweigh the risks and drawbacks of staying home. If you can’t make it out, keep watching as I’m trying to share live streams in addition to the shows we see in person.
