Local Spotlight: Get locked in with new Locked In Promotions

Earlier this year, we took a trip out to Tacoma, Washington for Bommer’s Skraight from the Underground Tour stop, and were truly impressed by what we saw. Taking place at the Freighthouse Square in Tacoma, this unorthodox yet impressive venue hosted some huge talent and great stage production. Along with Bommer, we saw fellow touring DJs Yunit, Duck Beats, Rattrix, and Hollowcore,  along with local talent Phntm and Chao.

All of this was made possible through the efforts of a brand-new production company, Locked In Promotions. The massive and high-quality sound system, multiple moving lights, and HD video projection wall exceeded in both quality and quantity. This week we got the opportunity to speak with Echo Hall, a member of Locked In Promotions to get to know him and the company.

Credit: Varsovia Media

Can you tell us how you got into promotions and how Locked In Promotions began?

Well, about five years ago my friend Andre and I met this guy Eric who had that little thing called Seattle Sub-Sessions. We brought a lot of underground guys through the area like Sudden Death, Bukez, Sweet Tooth, and all these super small-town artists at the time. It was just maybe 10 people packed in this little place called Club Contour on 1st Ave.

At that time, riddim was not what it is today, it was a much smaller scene. At that time you had guys like Subtronics and Virtual Riot making things that they called riddim and then it became kind of like this meme. I feel like it stayed that way for some time. But now we have this resurgence of people actually respecting the sound and taking it seriously. Then Andre met our friend Carson when they went to Northern Invasion last year.

Both of them noticed these connections that they had and they saw all these great artists at Northern Invasion and thought “If this is what they’re doing in Canada, we should be able to do this here, we should be able to make this happen too.” So, when they returned, Andre told me “Echo, I think it’s time to get back to it, we’ve done this in the past.”  We saw these curated lineups that were pushing this underground sound and we wanted to do that, too. We were like “Ok, what we did before was pretty small time, but we were at least able to sell tickets, so we know how to do that.”

Andre had the capital and Carson had these connections with Gram Greene and that whole roster. And then we were able to, run through the talent lineup and made the Bommer Show happen. After this first show, we really saw how we brought together the scene and we’re doing our next show with Destructors Talent soon and are looking far ahead to see what else is out there. 

Credit: Varsovia Media

Is there a specific structure for your staff at Locked-In or would you say it’s more freestyled? 

I think the structure is being built and understood as we go. We started as a small team of interested people and I think people ended up fitting in their roles where they were supposed to based on their experience and skill. People will rise to the occasion based on the energy that they’re willing to give. I’d say Andre is the primary leader and does a lot of the funding, Carson handles the contracts and a lot of the artist relations. I am the coordinator and also run social media, particularly Instagram, and I run the team that handles all other social media. So as we go these positions are getting more chiseled out. We’ve added a lot of people now and we’re slowly building into a nice structure.  

We were really impressed with what you guys pulled together for this show, especially the massive sound system, can you tell us what motivated you to go all out on a show like this?

Yeah, people are giving us a lot of accolades just for the system we brought; I wasn’t expecting it to come out so great. We worked with our friends at Resurgence who brought in all the equipment and had a huge role in the show with their setup. In terms of the logistics and the back end, it was really done well. We were really motivated by the want to show that we can put forth these curated lineups that people are going to want to see and that represent our sound here in Seattle. I mean, our motivation right now is to build this scene and keep building it out and put locals on and put them first. That’s what we’re trying to do with our mix series as well. We’d love to see our name be put out there because we’ve seen places like Florida and New York and California all doing similar things but we would love to just carve out a chunk for the Pacific Northwest.

The turnout for the show was really good too, was there anything you did that helped make the event so successful?

The turnout at the Bommer show was really good. We thought if we got 100 people to go then we had done well. The last couple weeks before the show tickets just flew and even at the doors we sold a lot of tickets and ended up with around 300 people. I definitely think that having our team structure helped a lot. When we had the show, we had about eight people who were deeply involved with everything going on and that really helped things run smoothly. We went out of our way to do it all right and put a lot of effort into it. We had good security and had a bunch of meetings with the owner of the venue. The day of the show we got there very early and made sure everything was set up and were constantly checking in with the door all night. I got a lot of feedback after the show and we got a lot of good suggestions on stuff to work on. We still have room to grow as well and I hope things are only going to get better. 

Credit: Varsovia Media

What kind of scene is Locked In trying to build? 

When we sat down at our first meeting we said we wanted to focus on inclusion and opportunity, especially for local artists and the LGBTQ community. We wanted to create this safe space as we noticed that the riddim scene is more on the outskirts of the dubstep scene. We wanted to make it feel comfortable for everyone to join and put our area on the map together. We want to make Washington a viable scene for riddim and make it become an accolade for an artist to say, “Hey, I played Seattle.” We are known for the Thunderdome here and a lot of people only come here just to go to the Tacoma Dome, so we’re trying to capitalize off of that popularity and make Tacoma a direct stop for riddim artists.

Is there anything that you learned from putting on this show? 

Things went so surprisingly well, I actually expected more hiccups to happen. I think if anything we learned to work better as a team and make sure assignments were being fulfilled as we went because I think when there was a handful of people that were particularly moving and shaking and another handful of people that were more going through the crowd watching the show. I think it’s just more so the logistics of our team and flowing better with how we create more value for our fans. Figuring out the door is another thing we could have done a little better because things got sort of hectic. I think it’s going to help a lot that we’re having our next event at the same venue too. 

Credit: Varsovia Media

What are some of your motivations for working in promotion? 

For my own journey as a promoter, I go to school for marketing, so for me, this is a testing ground. Right now we’ve been focusing on making audiences feel involved and making them feel like they are building this with us. We are an entity as a group, but we really want to be a vessel for people to enjoy shows and help make the scene itself. 

What can we expect to see in the future of Locked In Promotions?

Well, we just started our promoter outreach program to get people involved with us and help us to put on these shows. We have a show coming up, the Hypertension tour with Blood Thinnerz, with support from names like Rane and Pyro. We’ll be working with Resurgence again so expect to see the same great sound and lighting setup. We’re going to continue to do our guest mix series and we got our next one coming up. We will eventually be launching the Seattle Starting Five who will be like the main people who are making a lot of moves right now in the scene. That’s also who we’re pushing in our mix series as well. Just doing a lot for the locals. I think you’ll all enjoy what we have in the books for the future.