As the live music booker at Comet Ping Pong, David Combs has spent many of his days lately rescheduling shows that were set to take place at the Chevy Chase pizzeria as concerns about the coronavirus pandemic shuttered most businesses. When Combs, who also plays guitar and sings in the pop group Bad Moves, saw other musicians livestreaming their shows, he got to thinking.
This Sunday, the restaurant will host a free virtual music festival via Instagram Live, featuring a lineup of 14 D.C.-area artists and groups. “I hope that it can be a temporary stand-in for the community events that we have in the music scene,” says Combs.
Combs, who books between five to 10 shows a month at Comet Ping Pong, sent an email to a bunch of his usual local acts to gauge interest. The roster includes names like songwriter and producer Bartees Strange, garage rockers Born Dad, experimental duo Janel and Anthony, and Bad Moves, among others.
Each group will play for 15, 20, and 30 minute sets—the length is up to the artist—that will be broadcast via the venue’s Instagram account. Each act will log off after their performance, and the next act will log in. Combs says the brief breaks are “akin to the changeover time between bands at a live performance, but just, like, two minutes instead of a half hour.”
He’s also urging artists to promote their Venmo handles and Bandcamp pages, so viewers can tip them or buy their music, as well as a GoFundMe page to raise money for staff at Comet Ping Pong and its sister restaurant, Buck’s Fishing & Camping. Both restaurants are currently only open for takeout and delivery.
They’re not the only venue staging virtual shows this weekend, either. The Kennedy Center, known for hosting a free, daily Millennium Stage performance, is launching a thrice-weekly Couch Concerts series streaming on YouTube. And Pearl Street Warehouse has begun livestreaming concerts on the Wharf venue’s YouTube channel and Facebook pages. The performances are free to watch, though tips for the artists are encouraged. This weekend’s shows include singer-songwriter Jason Ager on Friday, and roots-rock singer Ashleigh Chevalier and guitarist Jon Wiley on Saturday.
Dubbed Pearl Street Live, the shows are an extension of the venue’s programming that its owner, Bruce Gates, says they’ve been prepping for a while, as they had long been recording and filming shows with the idea of one day sharing them online.
“We were sort of ready for something like this to happen—not that we wanted it to happen this way,” says Gates. They began streaming shows, which typically last between 45 minutes to an hour, about three weeks ago.
Pearl Street staff works with the performers to set up the highest quality stream they can, often from their bedrooms or home studios. The artists broadcast to an engineer, who then pushes the feed out to YouTube and Facebook. Gates says because viewers can write in comments for the performers, it’s a unique viewing experience.
“It’s even more intimate than seeing them at Pearl Street because you’re actually interacting with them real-time, not just before or after the show,” he says.
Many of the performers set to stream so far have played the venue in the past, or had shows scheduled there, though they are broadening their roster as they earn more attention, and plan to continue hosting them at least as long as the pandemic lasts.
Combs says he’s also open to hosting another Comet Ping Pong festival, depending on how this weekend goes.
“In an ideal world, we’d all be getting out and going to concerts again soon,” he says. But for now, he hopes these kinds of shows can provide music fans with a nice alternative. “I just hope that it gives people some kind of social catharsis in this time when we’re really lacking for it.”
Comet From Home takes place on Instagram Live on Sunday, 4 p.m.-10 p.m. FREE, but tips for musicians encouraged.
Pearl Street Live shows are broadcast regularly on Facebook Live and YouTube.
