Salem Live Music Calendar is Live
Salem Live Music is your source for…well, you get it.
Live music is so hot right now.
Even Target sells a hat exhorting you to “Support Live Music,” which could only be more ironic if it said, “Shop Local,” or “Support Small Business.” Fun fact: people who go see live music in Oregon spend an average of $39 at the venue or surrounding restaurants and bars, and tourists spend almost twice as much according to an Americans for the Arts study. A 2022 study found music employs over 20,000 people in the state directly and indirectly and generates nearly $4 billion in economic output. Supporting live music actually does support local business — thanks Target.
And while Salem’s big sister to the north gets plenty of well-deserved attention for it’s music scene, Salem is sneaking in with killer shows below the 45th parallel each week — everywhere from historic theaters with glam rock, to traditional Irish sessions, to punk in a vintage store basement. You could see at least nine great bands across different venues this Friday alone if you only could get your cloning machine working. I know, because I’ve been trying to get as many as possible listed on the Salem Live Music Calendar at the easy to remember URL SalemLive.Music. There’s also a weekly email listing shows that goes out each Tuesday.
Team Object Permanence
I suppose this post could end here. That’s it. That’s what the site does: lists live music happening in Salem, Oregon.
Any artist or venue can click the “Add Show” link and…you guessed it; add a show. Some of the regular venues will auto-fill when you start typing, but any venue can be added and don’t hesitate because you think the show is too small, or a house concert. List them all!
Spread the word and add your shows!
Another Event Listing Site?
The idea percolated when the OP crew hit up an awesome Bowie Birthday Tribute at The Grand Theater on a Friday night, and heard Anna Tivel and J.E. Sunde play intimate sets the next night at The Gov Cup. We were surprised by how many people at one show didn’t know about the other — even though the venues are across the street.
Sites like Bandsintown are great for finding shows and tracking your favorite artists, but a typical search for “Salem, OR” shows will turn up mostly Portland venues.
We absolutely love Press Play Salem and What’s Happening Salem for finding a myriad of brilliant events including music and great eats in town. Salem Townie runs the most old school meets new wave YouTube channel promoting local music and the website has fun listings including music, as well as every bar trivia and karaoke night Freddy can track down. You should subscribe to all three! You’ll likely find many of the same shows listed by those outlets and Salem Live Music.
Our hope is that you can get an itch to hear some music on a random Thursday night, don your “Support Live Music” trucker hat, fire up Salem Live Music and find a show. If nothing else, it’s helping us get out to more live music so that’s a selfish win! Get off the couch, take a risk, see your favorite local artist or discover something totally new that Spotify’s AI would never feed you. Most of all, support local…at Target.
Geek Stuff
We wanted to keep the site very simple, mobile friendly — like an app, but not so obnoxious or arrogant as to think it belongs permanently on your phone.
The whole site is a single page of HTML and javascript with a hook into Firebase for data storage. If you want to really nerd out, it’s Vanilla JS and Tailwind CSS doing most of the heavy lifting. Buttondown is great for emails. Netlify handles deployment, which entails dropping a single file into the app. So easy a caveman could do it.
It’s all free and simple to maintain — something we knew would be important to us actually keeping the site consistently updated and sparking joy instead of headaches. We would be thrilled to open source the code and share with anyone who wants to run a similar calendar for your town, city, etc. Just reach out to salem@objectperm.com.
Now, stop coding and go see a show! NERD.
