Keepsake House
We are a home for songwriters and storytellers to share the stage and build community,
not competition.
Our Story
Keepsake House was founded in NYC in spring 2021 by Jasmine Jang, an independent artist, and Hailey Savage, an event manager, with the mission to create a safe, supportive space for artists to share their work and nurture meaningful artist-audience connection. Through live shows that mix songwriting with storytelling, Keepsake House hopes to leave listeners with a deeper love for and understanding of the art made: a keepsake to hold onto.
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The concept of Keepsake House was first inspired by the collaborative nature of a roundtable concert featuring Jasmine Jang and fellow Asian American women songwriters that Hailey Savage hosted at a local museum in summer 2019. While forming a friendship and deep respect for each other, Jasmine and Hailey connected over the lack of community space or support for independent artists in New York.
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Keepsake House was founded mid-pandemic. Our first two shows were held on Zoom: the first (Hindsight) featuring all songwriters, and the second (Unmute Yourself) comedians. We slowly transitioned to outdoor shows and, once vaccination was widely available, indoor.
Thanks to pandemic-related funding and the generosity of co-founder Jasmine Jang and independent artist TONIE, we secured funding to produce a show in the fall called From Story to Song. The show featured both songwriters and storytellers and became the basis for our next project…
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Keepsake House launched our inaugural Artists in Residence program, which supported 3 songwriters and 1 storyteller through a year of shows in NYC.
Co-produced by Artist in Residence Alex Wong, we hosted the Show Yourself Benefit Residency for Asian Pacific American Heritage Month (APAHM in May) at Rockwood Music Hall.
Later this year, we hosted Linguistics, a show featuring four artists (including Artist in Residence Sarah Kang), all singing in different languages.
We then ran a successful crowdfunding campaign to raise $10,000 that would fund the next two iterations of From Story to Song.
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This year, Keepsake House supported 7 Artists in Residence (4 songwriters and 3 storytellers) and produced 10 shows at venues ranging from Rockwood Music Hall to City Winery and Triad Theater.
We also launched semi-monthly Open Mics at pinkFROG café in Williamsburg.
In December, we were featured in a segment on The Kelly Clarkson Show that aired nationwide.
We are currently in application to become a 501(c)3 non-profit organization and are in the process of forming our Board of Directors.
Our Values
Keepsake House is committed to supporting independent artists across genres, backgrounds, and level of experience. We are a fully volunteer team, meaning that artists receive 100% of our show profits. We offer guaranteed pay (rather than the more standard sales cut) and select artists through personal networks as well as public submissions. We do not tolerate any form of discrimination at any stage of our show making process. Because of our respective backgrounds, we are particularly committed to promoting Asian American talent as we actively seek out BIPOC and LGTBQ+ artists to be part of our shows.
We offer online viewing options (both live and recorded via Youtube) for all our residency shows at a lower ticket cost in order to make our shows as accessible as possible.
All of our shows are produced with three core values in mind: to be diverse in art form, genre, and identity; intersectional in experience and conversation; and equal in stage time, opportunity, and accessibility.
“There was such mutual respect and care for each other’s vulnerability and craft and a sense of human connection that was profoundly beautiful.”
—Audience member, From Story to Song (2021)
“You can tell everyone at Keepsake really cares and supports each other. There’s a sense of family and community.”
—Audience member, Jay Miners: In Betweens Album Release (2021)