Wide Hive Records: Press Info

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Entrepreneur Magazine

You Can Watch A Band Play Live And For Just 15 Bucks Take Home A Freshly Minted CD Of The Gig

The band is rocking. Everything is coming together on the night. The crowd is just right, the venue perfect and the guys and gals on stage are playing their hearts out. Shame it's just a one off. But thanks to Gregory Howe, it needn't be. Howe runs Wide Hive, an innovative San Francisco venue that is busy redefining live music on the West Coast. In this painstakingly renovated former bank building in the Mission district, you can watch a band play live and, for just 15 bucks, leave an hour after they come off stage clutching a freshly minted CD of the performance you've just seen, complete with an inner sleeve designed during the gig using digital photos of the band and crowd.

The venue has its own recording studio, iMacs for sleeve design and a CD presser. And, with so much to be done in such a short time, Wide Hive is, as its name suggests, a joint effort, taking in local musicians, technicians, artists and designers. But Howe is the man directing the collective consciousness.

A liberal-arts graduate of Williams College, the 30-year-old Howe returned to his native California to work as an environmental engineer before moving into the music industry. Eventually he ended up running the Green Battery studio, but it was his time playing with local band Liquid, and inspiration drawn from the success of NYC's Knitting Factory, that spawned Wide Hive.

"I noticed that some of the recordings of our gigs were better than the CDs we put together in the studio," says Howe. "The energy of the audience can really help propel an artist forward." That sparked a two-year odyssey which resulted in Wide Hive's opening late last year. Howe and two others converted the building themselves and now run the space, which includes a second-hand record outlet and a cafe.

The primary business, however, is music. And with Wide Hive Records's two releases already selling well and more on the way, Howe is beginning to talk of 'perpetual release time' and a regular schedule of events is being developed, encompassing monthly Wide Hive label nights and others devoted to affiliated labels, bands and collectives. Hiring out the recording studio is already beginning to claw back start-up costs, so Howe is now entertaining ideas of branches in New York and London. Because, as he says: "Wide Hive is an expanding consciousness."

For interviews, photos, or more information about Wide Hive artists, please contact:
press@widehive.com - (415) 282-9433.