"Live at The Alley" goes live

Nelson(right) and Costas(left) at The Alley recording studio
Photo courtesy of liveatthealley.com

Marc Nelson, 31, sits in a dark recording studio, The Alley, in Valparaiso, Indiana, where he works as a mixer and partner. The red and blue squared retro wallpaper seems to make everything around it look vintage, including Nelson.  His posture is almost regal, which is fitting since he looks like a king sitting amidst all the shimmering silvers of the microphones, mixing boards and sound tools.  He fiddles with his iPhone4, which quietly chimes every few minutes, directs Oliver, his four-year-old Weimaraner, to the lush leather couch in the corner and regales stories from when he lived in Los Angeles.  “If you haven’t noticed, I’m very ADHD,” he quips. 

Though his attention span is close to a puberty stricken teenager’s, possibly lower, it’s exactly those tendencies that lead him to the idea for “Live at The Alley”, a TV series that exposes musicians from Chicago and Northwest Indiana.  The series, which airs Mondays at 9:30pm on Lakeshore PBS, is a thought child long in the making for Nelson.  It certainly wasn’t all strawberry fields getting started, but with the help of Evan Costas, 24, the idea has come alive.

Nelson has long been part of the music world.  He lived in L.A. and worked with studios as a mixer, managed the studio that The Alley came to replace and has been performing small gigs where he plays the guitar and sings. But it was when he worked as an assistant for CRC, one of the Midwest’s largest record studios, that he got the idea for the show. “They [CRC] had these things for Q101 where these massive national bands would come in to do radio programming and they would come in and perform live in the studio that night.  But they never had any visuals, ever and I always wondered why,” Nelson says. 

Throughout his time at CRC, the seed grew from a thought to an idea.  “Over the years I was thinking how we could do this and I started thinking about doing local showcases.”  Eight years later, Nelson met Costas, an energetic recent college graduate who took on camera work as a hobby.  “After I graduated my dad (who is the mayor of Valparaiso) thought it’d be a good idea to get some cameras and do a few commercials,” Costas says.  “So I initially did that and started getting into it and doing research and that’s how the passion grew.”

  The process for the show started after Costas filmed Nelson performing at Valparaiso’s annual Popcorn Festival.  “He shot the video of me and the next day he had it done.  It was missing some technical aspects, but man, he had the eye,” Nelson says.  From there, Nelson approached Costas about doing a show, he agreed and the idea Nelson had for so many years was finally falling into place.

Lakeshore PBS picked up the show after Nelson mentioned it at a local awards ceremony.  “I was in the area’s 20 Under 40, an entrepreneur award, and I mentioned I wanted to do the show while there and PBS contacted me and said okay.” The station gave Nelson and Costas an exact time space for 26 minutes, 46 seconds. According to Nelson, the specific time allotment combined with figuring out how to shoot the show made the first few steps miserable and caused a few hiccups in production.  “We shot the first episode, which was originally going to be 30 minutes on one band, which was great for about 18 and then all of a sudden you’re like I’ve got 12 more minutes left on the same band!”  A decision was quickly made to have two bands per episode, which made the show more engaging. Costas also admits, he wasn’t prepared for how extreme the work would be.  “I was kind of lazy about it at first,” he remembers.  “But Marc got on my case about it and I didn’t realize it’d be so intense so I busted my ass on the first show and it all started to work.”

Now, with 23 episodes shot, things are moving more systematically.  “We try to get the bands in and out in around three hours,” Nelson says.  “The band sets up around 3:00pm, Marc sets up all the equipment and I show up and start shooting the interviews, then we shoot the songs,” Costas explains.  “We do two takes of one song to see which one is better and they’re usually out by around 6:00pm.”  Three hours may seem like a short amount of time, but for busy musicians, it’s helpful.  “They really had their stuff together,” says Stephanie Ruggeri, a singer who will appear on “Live at The Alley”.  “It was cool seeing them both do what they love while I got to do what I love.”

As they move forward, a shared vision and desire to represent local musicians bonds the minds behind “Live at The Alley”.  “It’s hard for bands to make it big,” Costas says, “It’s great to see them get the exposure they deserve.”  “The big thing is to expose as much as you can to this generation.  The awareness thing is important for these bands that are good,” Nelson agrees.  The bands are also excited about the exposure aspect.  “I think people will be surprised to see how much talent there is in the Chicago/Northwest Indiana area.  There’s a lot of people who just don’t realize what’s out there,” says Nelson’s Alley partner, Chad Clifford, who will also appear with his band, the Crawpuppies, on “Live at The Alley”. 

The future of the show is up in the air.  Nelson and Costas are signed with PBS, but can shop around for a new network for the show’s second season.  There are lines of bands wanting to get a spot on the series and Nelson and Costas plan to continue their mission of getting good music out to the masses.  “We want to take it as far and as big as it can go,” Costas says.  The team doesn’t make any money from the show yet, but that’s really not the point.  They have too much energy and passion to worry about that right now.  “The show will be done after Christmas, so I’ll have to find something to do… we’ll probably be shooting season two and working on commercials, which I’d like to do more of,” Nelson says.  “I can’t just sit at my house, I can’t watch TV I have to be doing something constantly.”  There’s that ADHD kicking in.