EDDY UNDERTOW perfoming Like A Memory in the Spring 2024 SSC, May 25

“Tahoe Al” Miller perfoming Ravens in The Rain in the Summer 2024 SSC, August 17

THE MISSION

The purpose of the Songwriter Showcase Concerts (SSCs) is to provide a curated forum where music artists from the Lake Tahoe region and the listening public can come together in an intimate setting to enjoy high-quality live music with their friends and associates, and where the public can support local creators to present songs not heard elsewhere and provide feedback to the artists. The SSC proceeds on the basis that entertainment is a basic human need, and seeks to fill a niche to provide a richer, live music experience for the listener than is generally available locally, or available through the mainstream streaming media and the club circuit, or the large concert.

Those circuits preoccupy most working musicians with playing the popular songs of others (cover songs) promoted in the mainstream. Anyone can at times enjoy that sort or nightclub / bar / restaurant scene with all the new and old hits, an occasional original song, the extraneous noise and audience inattention to the music in the “background.” The SSC is intended to be a different kind of experience, a place where audiences and performers will engage with each other in high fidelity.

The SSC is also premised on the inherent human desire for new and novel songs, songs of our time and place, and in hopes that the greatest songs are as yet unwritten (taste being in the subjective ear of the listener) or are undiscovered or mostly unheard for lack of venues. The music industry is dying and moving to Artificial Intelligence, streaming legacy-band catalogs, and live shows for big bucks, but for a tiny minority of industrial artists among many unsung musicians. Having had more fun playing music and writing and recording songs than most anything else, Tahoe Al doesn’t plan to stop. The SSC is about fostering human creativity and expression and providing a venue locally to present his own creative works, and those of other songwriters and musicians, to interested listeners. May you enjoy them!

All are invited to come out and join the fun and the celebration of original live music with your friends, neighbors, community members and peers, get to know the songwriters, and experience and foster a unique form of entertainment and social interaction in our community. Likewise, with the Open Mics (OMs) planned, it will be a set after the SSC available for anyone to present original or cover songs, music, brief readings or poetry. This will be by sign-up the day of the SSCOM and ending by around 10 pm. Bring your best!