Marketing Campaign of the Year Nominee

Spokane Arena

“The Bucket List”

A 2013 article in Spokane’s Weekly A&E was the inspiration for our 2014 campaign. The article entitled “This We Believe: Music Resolutions for Spokane,” simply asked us to “BRING PEARL JAM” to the Spokane Arena. We sent the article to Pearl Jam’s agent and three days later we received a call back. Pearl Jam performed in Spokane for the first time in 20 years on November 30, 2013.

After the concert, we started to brainstorm how to take the underlying theme from that experience and use it in a marketing campaign. After months of planning, The Bucket List was born. The Bucket List asked a simple question: “Who do you want to see perform at the Spokane Arena?” Housing an entry form on our website, we made a strong social media push and worked with our traditional media partners to launch the campaign in February 2014. One month and over 10,000 unique entries later, we had Spokane’s Bucket List.

The List has become a guide as we market our facility on a national level. Using a direct marketing approach, we target over 80 promoters/agents, sending them unique gifts in creative packaging. The mailings have been met with enthusiasm. To date, we have welcomed and/or announced 8 artists on The List and have plans to announce at least 4 more within the next 6 months, and several more within the year.

The work performed with The Bucket List is resulting in a killer 20th Anniversary Season at the Spokane Arena.

We all agree that Spokane’s inferiority complex is not worth talking about any longer. Because at this point, thinking about anywhere but

here is just spinning our wheels. Of all the great things about Spokane, the local music

scene is alive and well — but it can always improve, right? With this in mind, we polled 50 people in the local music

scene about what we, the Spokane music scene, should aim to achieve here in 2013. As a community, what are our New Year’s resolutions? We were bowled over by the innovative ideas we got in return — a selection of which we’ve printed here.

Ramsey Troxel, one local musician who responded to our request for ideas, framed the Spokane scene perfectly,

saying “The best thing about Spokane is that it is Spo-kane. We should not be trying to emulate bigger cities or be something we are aren’t. … There is something special about this place. This identity can continue to grow if we come together and grow as a community.” Here are a few great places to start. (LEAH SOTTILE)

RESOLUTION #1: MAKE HOUSES COUNTI’d like to see more houses opened up for house shows, poetry readings, comedy shows and other creative endeavors. For the year-and-a-half or so that we hosted touring bands and local acts in our living room, a niche was filled (partially) that was left open by a dip in the boom and bust cycle of Spokane all-ages venues. Saturat-ing one or two houses with shows isn’t a realistic long-

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This We BelieveSome New Year’s resolutions for the Spokane music scene in 2013

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term option for many reasons that we learned in 2012, so in 2013, I hope to see a larger network of people with living rooms planning events for their communities and spreading the house show love! Without expensive sprin-kler systems, without cops and without booze, we were able to bring dozens of bands and hundreds of people together who would have otherwise passed by Spokane while on tour. The potential for a larger underground scene is here now... — Taylor Weech, of the Dirty Yeti house, KYRS radio host

RESOLUTION #2: BRING PEARL JAMWell, really any big rock act that could fill the Spo-kane Arena will do, but if they can get Pearl Jam, that would be excellent. There are a lot of reasons Pearl Jam wouldn’t play here, the first of which being the fact that they are based in Seattle and people in Spokane can easily go there if and when they decide to play. But here’s my point: the Spokane Arena should resolve to have some sort of massive concert experience each year that would cross the sort of demographical lines they’ve already begun to explore. It would be a risk and booking rock acts is a notoriously difficult task complete with con-tractual obligations, but wouldn’t it be rad to have a huge rock show at the Arena? That canceled Van Halen show was a start, but let’s get freaking Pearl Jam — perhaps the greatest continually touring American rock band of all time — to play here. — Mike Bookey, Inlander culture editor and devoted Pearl Jam fan

RESOLUTION #3: BRING CLASSICAL AND ROCK MUSICIANS TOGETHERWe have great large theaters in Spokane, why aren’t they being used to house acts that cater to the younger side of our city’s demographic? There were quite a few good shows at the Bing this year. But why aren’t we seeing more exciting events at the Fox? The National, Grizzly Bear, St. Vincent? [Spokane also needs to] bridge the gap between classical musicians and indie musicians. With the recent Spokane Symphony strike I have been thinking a lot about how no musician right now is safe from the fact that our society continues to monetarily devalue what musicians do. … We need to continue speaking out and raising awareness but we also need to work harder to make what we do new and exciting to people. I think one way to do this could be connecting classical musicians with indie musicians or even bigger touring bands to col-laborate for events. Similar to what the Seattle Rock Or-chestra does, but maybe we could come up with our own spin. It would give musicians in general more of a greater communal connection in the city and push the audience’s palate on both sides to experience something new. — Karli Ingersoll, local musician, proprietress of The Bartlett

RESOLUTION #4: RETHINK THE VENUESThere will always be live music in bars, and there will always be all-ages venues that open and close here. But I propose that in 2013, we forget about waiting for a venue to book a show we want to see and just do it ourselves. It has worked before: back in the day here, Spokane’s punk scene was known for hosting bands in church basements, grange halls, garages and community centers. Green Day once played the Peaceful Valley Community Center, AFI rocked the Westminster Church — and that all happened before Facebook even existed. Contacting your favorite band is easier now more than ever before. My point is: don’t wait around for someone else to do the work for you. Pick up the phone, call around to some spots and see if they’re open to hosting live music. Healthy music scenes thrive on being creative. And I’d bet money that a band on tour would rather play a packed show full of kids in a weird church basement over a bar filled with

MUSIC | RESOLUTIONS “THIS WE BELIEVE,” CONTINUED...

bored patrons any day of the week. — Leah Sottile, Inlander music editor

RESOLUTION #5: EXPERIMENT WITH VARIETYOne idea that I’ve pushed for years is diverse bills for shows. While, yes, I am in a metal band, I like playing with non-metal bands. I love to mix it up and put togeth-er interesting shows. Have a metal band, a blues band and a rock band. To me it makes sense. Not everyone likes that idea but the benefit I see in it is exposing people to different worlds, letting people know that there is other quality music out there in different genres. — Jordan Hilker, bassist in local band Odyssey

RESOLUTION #6: MUSIC FIRST, SALES LATERI respect the service that the bar scene in Spokane does, but it has become too domineering. Bars can be an awe-some environment for musicians, they can also be incred-ibly destructive. Music is hardly the first priority of any bar owner, and of course they do not want bands playing in their bar that are going to drive away customers. This would not be as much of a problem if there were more more spaces in town to play at besides bars. What hap-pens, whether people are conscious of it are not, is that more and more artists start to pander to their audiences just to have opportunities to play, and this stifles any sort of true artistic progression.

Finally I believe the scene can be much more sup-portive of the youth involved. It is these people who

are young enough to believe they can actually make a difference, and take the reigns once we all get old, lazy and apathetic. Successful venues such as the Vera Project in Seattle and The Smell in LA (and many others) are almost entirely supported by youth volunteers. — Ramsey Troxel, local musician

RESOLUTION #7: BE A SUPER FANThis may seem like a no-brainer, but serious music fans need to know that they can easily contribute to the Inland Northwest scene on an individual level if they’re motivated. A person’s contribution isn’t limited to just starting a band. There has to be an infrastructure within the community to help get a band out of the garage and onto the stage. Being part of college and community ra-dio, having DIY space or starting a bedroom record label are things that are within the reach of someone who sim-ply wants to. All of these things (and more) are catalysts for live music to happen in any town. Furthermore, all of these elements must act in conjunction with each other. Networking is key. You can start a band or a DIY label, but if you don’t reach out to other bands, other labels, and other like-minded people, you won’t get far. — Kentaro Murai, a former KUOI DJ who now lives in Japan

RESOLUTION #8: PLAN A FESTIVALSpokane is culturally conflicted. Those who pay attention know. It’s a tale of two cities… on one hand Spokane is a gray, post-industrial hovel that the 1970s took a big

New Year’s Resolution #8: Plan a big festival. JOE KONEK PHOTO

42 INLANDER JANUARY 3, 2013