For the first few years of Lo-Fi Cherokee, founder Bill Streeter was reticent about throwing a premiere party. But the event—during which local bands and musicians are filmed performing one song in a single take, all within the same day—is all about being spontaneous and taking chances.
Lo-Fi Cherokee is an annual music video showcase hosted along Cherokee Street, where music fans are encouraged to follow the crew and attend each shoot as Streeter and his team film performances at different locations. Three years into Lo-Fi Cherokee, Streeter agreed to hold a premiere party to screen the videos for the public. While he wasn’t interested at first, the premiere party is now considered a staple of the Lo-Fi Cherokee experience, as important as the video shoots themselves.
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“The premiere party is sort of bringing together a group of musicians who wouldn’t necessarily interact with each other in another context,” Streeter says. “People that play music tend to stick to certain genres, and they have certain groups of people that they collaborate with…But it’s pretty rare to have a music event where you have such a broad range of genres.”
This year’s premiere party will be held at Off Broadway on Sunday, May 28, at 7 p.m. Streeter hopes attendees walk away from the party with a deeper appreciation for the St. Louis’ music scene, and maybe even a new favorite artist or two. He describes the premiere’s atmosphere as communal and ebullient—one of his favorite moments every year is when the partygoers’ applause merges with the applause heard at the end of each video.
“It’s like a double whammy of enthusiasm comes out,” he says. “It’s just a funny thing. I don’t know where else you would ever hear people clapping over a recording of people clapping.”
Production manager Lori Ritter was one of Lo-Fi Cherokee’s earliest supporters. While following the film crew during their first shoot in 2012, she quickly became enamored with the project and decided she wanted to get involved. Now, she’s in charge of raising money, procuring sponsors, and handling the project’s day-to-day business and PR activities.
Ritter says her favorite aspect of the premiere is the opportunity for artists and attendees to watch the videos for the first time together. Events like this allow St. Louis’ music scene to reinforce and celebrate its collective identity, she say. Having lived in Seattle for 30 years before moving here, Ritter knows a good scene when she sees one.
“The music scene here is just as good as the music scene in Seattle,” she says. “It’s really unfortunate that people don’t know about it like they do the Seattle scene. I think we deserve to be highlighted.”
Lo-Fi Cherokee and its annual premiere party provide an outlet to do just that. In anticipation for this year’s premiere, Streeter, Ritter, and others involved in the project told us about some of the videos they’re looking forward to most.
Lynn O’Brien at Earthbound Beer
Singer-songwriter Lynn O’Brien might be the only musician to perform for Lo-Fi Cherokee while floating in mid-air. Shot at Earthbound Beer while O’Brien and her backing musicians played on a walkway suspended above the audience, the video captures all the spirit and group participation of her live shows. “I’m really an improviser at heart,” she says. “At one point during the song, instead of doing an instrumental solo or a scat solo, I went out across the catwalk and did an improvised call-and-response with the audience where I sang a line and they sang a line back.” O’Brien grew up in Central Illinois and visited St. Louis frequently before moving here in 2019. During the pandemic, she lost nearly all her work as a musician and keynote speaker — in this regard, her Lo-Fi Cherokee set was a way to commemorate her return to the stage. “I’m really excited to celebrate [the other artists] and also celebrate the crew who made such a diverse array of videos, and to have a video of this new life that I’m living here in St. Louis,” she says.
The Mighty Pines at STL Stylehouse
The Mighty Pines are a breezy, bluegrass-inflected roots rock quartet with one of the most anticipated videos at this year’s premiere. For the video, the band performed at STL Stylehouse, a shop that specializes in St. Louis–themed apparel and accessories—as befits a group that’s never shied away from expressing their local pride. STL Stylehouse was one of the first businesses to get involved with Lo-Fi Cherokee, and has participated in the event every year since 2012. Randy Vines, one of the store’s owners, says it was especially exciting to watch this year’s shoot, as Neil Salsich, founding member of The Mighty Pines, can currently be seen on season 23 of NBC’s The Voice. “It was cool to see his trajectory on the show, and then culminate it with their set at Stylehouse,” Vines says. “…I’m really looking forward to seeing how that translates to the screen.”
Midwest Avengers at Cola Private Lounge
More than 50 people have performed in the Midwest Avengers over its over 30-year history, and the group’s music—a lively melange of hip-hop, rock, R&B, and funk-–reflects the diversity of its membership. Emcee John Harrington says the group’s Lo-Fi Cherokee video, shot at The Cola Private Lounge, provides a visual representation of this. “It was elbow to elbow, packed wall-to-wall when we did our video,” he says. “…It was like a house party at 1 p.m.” Formed in 1992, the Midwest Avengers was a syncretic creation from the start, with young people from disparate subcultures all contributing to the group’s sound. Its Lo-Fi Cherokee video is a fitting introduction for newcomers, and a spiritual affirmation for those who have been with the group from the beginning. “Midwest Avengers is always accepting, and we’ll always have a good time,” Harrington says.
