🚪Indie Concert Series: Two Rooms

Hey!

Have you heard of the Two Rooms concert series?

Every concert has two rooms: one for music and one for meeting people.

Founder Lauren Lee has been curating an authentic music community of fans and artists for the last two years, giving both a stage to perform and a place to meet collaborators.

Check out Two Rooms’ next event on April 30th. It’s a panel discussion with successful artists and industry folks called “How to Create Fans: Online and Outside.”

Recently, I spoke with Lauren about her vision for Two Rooms and how artists can get involved.

What is Two Rooms?

Lauren Lee: Two Rooms is one room for music and one room for friendship! It’s a concert and community event series with kindness at its core. Anyone who has spent time in the music industry knows that’s unique.

I work in music because my whole heart is for artists. Art is deeply important to our human experience.

We need to care for the people who make it. I can’t wave a magic wand and make artists’ lives easy, but I can at least create a performance space where artists feel safe and cared for.

Two Rooms is more than a concert. Why?

I’ve been working in music for about 12 years.

Introductions to other people furthered my career the most, and they changed my life.

It gives me so much joy to be the person who introduces people now.

After Two Rooms shows, I’ve seen artists play at each other’s gigs, get string arrangements for their albums, start touring together, and even get connected to sync deals. Mostly, I see people find new friends at the same point in their artist careers, where they can give each other advice and encouragement.

The connection I love seeing the most is watching equally talented artists see each other at shows and get starstruck.

Because of Two Rooms, they can courageously meet that person and make music together.

It’s amazing.

What surprised you about building and growing this project?

When I started Two Rooms, I saw that money is the primary priority for many businesses like mine.

It’s also usually the root of their bad vibes.

So, I set goals around social capital instead.

I wanted Two Rooms to be LA's safest, friendliest, kindest show. It should be a meeting place where artists feel secure and cared for and can, as a result, focus on their performances, making it the best show in LA.

At our second anniversary party, I had a full house full of incredible people who felt a sense of belonging here. The community exists and grows and flourishes outside of me now, but I still can’t wrap my head around it.

What advice would you give to LA-based artists trying to build community or grow their music career in 2025?

Do everything.

It sounds like terrible advice, I know. But I’ve seen success and recognition come from all directions. No one path guarantees an artist success (if there were, we all would be doing it).  

Someone once described a career in music as a Rubix Cube.

You keep trying to twist things into new combinations, and sometimes, someone comes along and messes up everything you’ve been working on. But then maybe it causes you to find a new solution.

You have to keep at it—recording, performing, promoting, creating content, submitting to sync libraries, collaborating, and networking—and be ready when an opportunity comes.

How do you choose artists to spotlight at Two Rooms?

So I have a Two Rooms autograph book, and everyone who has played at Two Rooms has signed it.

I joke that the book is my retirement plan! When they become rich and famous, I can sell the book with their signatures and buy a house on a lake.

The music has to be good, but I also want an artist taking their career seriously.

• How much music have they released?

• Are they planning on releasing more?

• How are they marketing themselves?

• Are they growing their social media platforms?

• Are they branding themselves well?

I want to give that opportunity to someone who can maximize that spotlight.

You can be involved in many other ways beyond performing at a Two Rooms show.

We have jam nights, community nights, educational panel events, an online artist resource hub, and more!

There are so many amazing people in our community.

Two Rooms seems to be grounded in inclusion and intention. How do you approach this?

Honestly, I think having a woman visibly in charge does a lot of the work.

I’m loud about my values online and at the events, so that sets the tone pretty well. It gives toxic people the ick, which works great for us.

The rest of it comes from intentionally booking artists with similar values.

For example, if I’m bringing an artist who’s a womanizer and infusing that into their music, that attracts fans who resonate with it. Suddenly, women aren’t as safe at my show, and that’s just a bad vibe. The same goes for racism, homophobia, and transphobia.

It’s easier to screen for than you’d think, and I’ve never had trouble finding unbelievably good artists.

Where do you see the music community heading in LA?

I’ve had two instances where someone has invited me to an event and said, “It’s kind of a Two Rooms rip-off.”

That's good! I want copycats. That means more people are feeding their artists and creating more inclusive spaces.

I want a culture of kindness to take over the emerging artist scene so that artists feel empowered to demand respect and care as they navigate other spaces in the music industry.

In addition, with the economy, the country, and the world going the way they are, communities like this will become vital to our survival. The more we can trust and lean on each other through bartering, mutual aid, and emotional support, the more art we can create in the safety of our friendships.

I’m stubbornly optimistic that we can make lemonade from some unprecedented lemons.

Thanks for reading!

- Nick (LA Music)

Other popular resources on LA Music

In case you missed them, these are our top guides:

• 🎤 Open Mics in LA: Share songs.

• 🚶 Busking in LA: Play outside.

• 📆 Concert Calendar: Share your events.

• 🔎 Musician Classifieds: Find bandmates.

• 🎸 Rehearsal Studios: Hourly and monthly.

• 🎙️ Recording Studios: Finish songs.

• 💿️ Labels Accepting Submissions

• ✍️ Publishers Accepting Submissions

• 📈 Submit a Business

New stuff in 2025:

• 📱 TikTok Music Marketing 101: Advice from a major label TikTok agency.

• 🎥 Trailer Music 101: Learn the basics of film sync.