How to run a music festival out of your house

For more information including the first lineup announcement, visit: Facebook.com/Stoopfestlansing. Are you a performer interested in playing Stoop Fest? Local submissions begin in January.

Imagine yourself walking down Clemens Steet in Lansing’s eastside neighborhood and through the crisp air you hear the sound of a rowdy garage rock band pouring out of the windows of a nearby home. You check it out, and suddenly you’re at a living room rock concert. Afterword, you learn of another show just a couple blocks down the way where artists ranging from rappers to folk singers will perform. 

In just one afternoon, you’ve taken a big adventurous bite of Lansing’s underground music scene. That is the experience of Stoop Fest, a DIY music festival that is hosted in an organized junction of houses, backyards, basements and venues like the Avenue Café. Thankfully for indie music lovers, it is returning in spring after a yearlong absence due to the coronavirus pandemic. 

Debuting in 2016, Stoop Fest was inspired by the Lamp Light Festival in Grand Rapids, a series of concerts that were hosted entirely at private homes. Stoop Fest co-founder and organizer Dom Korzecke was charmed by the humble festival and wanted to bring that special grassroots music experience back to his hometown of Lansing. 

“I was running shows out of the house I was living at. I met up with other people who also were running shows out of their homes and asked if they wanted to come together for a big joint house show. The idea was to open our doors all on the same day and a have big music festival. From there, we’ve focused on making it bigger and better,” Korzecke said. 

What makes a house show enjoyable? Those unfamiliar with the concept might suspect that it would be chaotic, messy, unsafe or otherwise just a poor way to enjoy live music. For musicians and concertgoers like Emma Grrl, who helps organize Stoop Fest and leads the Lansing punk group She/Her/Hers, it’s all about creating a sense of intimacy and breaking down barriers between fans and artists. 

“With a house show there’s so much less of a barrier. There’s no green room. There’s no stage. You’re hanging out in the living and so is the band. Then, they go to the other side of the living room and play. You’re on the same level both physically and metaphorically,” Grrl said.

With this informal, party-like atmosphere, it’s much easier to directly interact with bands, whether you’re one of performers on the lineup or an audience member. At larger concert venues, it’s nigh impossible to get an opportunity to hang out with the artists on the marquee, but at Stoop Fest’s valley of house shows you’ll be bumping elbows with Lansing musicians all day long. 

“Stoop Fest is a really good opportunity for bands of all different genres to interact with each other. When I first played, the band before me was a band from Lansing that I had never heard of. It’s a relationship-building experience. You get to know what your scene is and who is there,” Grrl said. 

Just as Lansing’s music scene has grown as a community over the years, so has Stoop Fest as a legitimate music festival. It’s evolved from booking entirely local acts to attracting larger national acts, which has earned Stoop Fest some seriously devoted attention from music fans not only from Michigan but across the entire Midwest. Despite the positive forward momentum, there are several hurdles when it comes to running a festival in such a non-traditional format, and Korzecke said he and his team have learned several important lessons along the way. One major consideration is that of accessibility, it’s not as simple to ensure that somebody in a wheelchair can comfortably view a concert in somebody’s basement as opposed to a show in a regular music venue. Some solutions implemented by Stoop Fest organizers include hosting more shows in easy to get to backyards and using digital video equipment to broadcast a livestream of what’s going on in the house’s basement to its living room television. Stoop Fest has also moved to ban strobe lights, which can be very harmful to people with epilepsy. 

“There are always accessibility issues. A lot of house shows are just not accessible, which speaks to a much broader problem that just music and shows. A lot of buildings are not accessible if they don’t have to be, which is a really big issue and we always have it in mind,” Grrl said. “Something I want to move forward with is setting up cameras and live streaming every Stoop Fest show. We have to try our best to come up with creative solutions when we can.”

Another important improvement Stoop Fest’s organizers are focusing on is crafting a lineup that accurately depicts the diverse range of independent artists in Lansing. While most music festivals are designed to cater only to a certain a genre, Stoop Fest instead caters to the idea of Lansing music as a whole. That means booking not just guitar-based rock bands, but also including electronic artists and hip-hop groups.  

“We’re volunteer-run, it can be difficult to book bands if our fingers aren’t on the pulse of specific scenes in Lansing. I want to speak out and say if anybody is reading this article and is interested in us helping make this festival more inclusive, we would love to have you,” Grrl said. 

While the Stoop Fest team works on finalizing its lineup for 2022, there is always the lingering question of COVID protocol and safety as the pandemic twists and turns. Korzecke said many of the festival’s shows will be held outdoors, and those hosted indoors will have strict capacity limits and upgraded ventilation. 

“We’re trying to be as COVID-safe as possible. It’s at the very front of our mind on how we’re designing the festival, and it’s going to look a little different than usual because of that,” he said.

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