EXCLUSIVE: Go Behind The Scenes Of Hands Like Houses' 'Live In Ya Lounge' Performance

Our music began being impacted by COVID-19 with the cancellation of Download Festival. 

We were so excited for the festival and the production we had planned – we had a huge show all ready to go; crazy production, the works! As things unfolded and we started to see the implications we were facing (six-nine months of little to no income) we hit the drawing board fast to brainstorm our next move. 

Our sound engineer had just taken a job up with a local production company, EAVS, who had also lost their upcoming work. This is where the idea began. We couldn’t play live shows but we could stream a live show now that everyone was in isolation. We saw a lot of great live-streams starting to pop up but wanted to create something closer to our headlining show atmosphere. Something with special production, but while also being able to capture all the angles for the viewer. We wanted to translate all the energy and excitement we and the audience gets from a live show and put it in an online environment.

We quickly put together a rough outline of how we could pull it off and started working with the EAVS crew on the logistics of making this happen. We called the police and made sure we were able to pull this off legally, EAVS also implemented strict new sanitary procedures and even made sure for the performance we had separate stages to ensure safety and health was a priority. In a time when the general feel of the industry and community at large was quite grim, this project seemed to get everyone on a new level of excitement, including us.

Here's how it came together:

EAVS' production team start building the stage plot in the carpark outside their warehouse. It’s a somewhat convenient location as nothing needs to be trucked into a venue, just moved outside.

The isolation stages are put in place the day before the event. We opted for a stage setup different to our standard performance because... we had no one to play for. We thought this would give a more interesting point of view for the punters in the lounge.

Lights go in and Alex starts getting a feel for how it might all come together. It starts to feel like a really high-end music video shoot, except when it comes time, we don't have the freedom of several takes. One shot baby.

Show day. We are 90% setup and still have no idea how the night is going to run, but the lights are looking good and we are ready to rock out. We have no green room, we can't really hang out closely or get a vibe going together. A social distancing green room is a strange one indeed. 

Two hours to showtime. We are all still scrambling trying to figure out how this operation will run, we feel like we are trying to put on a footy grand final production... but with no experience and 1/10 of the staff. Luckily the crew at EAVS and our touring crew live and breathe this world and made us feel comfortable and confident.

A big thanks to the team at Sennheiser for sending us top of the line equipment to borrow to ensure we could fully peg it.

Sign up to the band's Patreon page to watch the full performance.