For folks who love live music, or those who aren’t sure whether they want to hire a live band or a DJ for their event, the DJ / Band Hybrid is a perfect fit. These performances are always anchored on a DJ set that keeps the party going from start to finish and offers us all the flexibility that comes with DJing. We’re able to play any music you can dream up, vs. being stuck to a particular repertoire of songs. The live horns, drums and guitar are additive to the DJ set, play in parallel, and breathe life into the music in a way that only live music can.

Our musicians aren’t necessarily playing for every moment or on every song, but come to the surface to add energy and spontaneity to the music and the dance party. Horns and guitar will layer on top of the tracks and be featured for high-energy solo moments, and drums act like the glue between the tracks and live music.

To see and hear this all in action, please watch our videos!

Our pricing varies depending on the event scope, location and the number of musicians included, so we always like to chat with folks before sending a quote. Please contact us if you’d like a quote, and we’ll get back to you within a day or two. In the meantime, you can get a rough idea of our prices here.

Once we’ve had a chance to chat and things feel like a good fit, we’ll send you a basic contract to read over. Once signed, a 50% deposit (online, via credit card) is required to confirm the booking. We start working through planning, logistics, and music requests thereafter!

Yes, we’re comfortable MCing and making announcements as needed. By design, our MC style is minimal and not performative – you won’t see us jumping on the microphone to crack jokes or hype up the crowd during the dance party. Instead of yelling at folks to jump up and down, we prefer to inject energy into the performance with our instruments.

All our wedding packages come with at least one sound system setup with more available for an additional fee, and we’re able to provide wireless microphones for the ceremonies, speeches and toasts, etc. Background music playlists are also provided for non-performance times (cocktail hours, dinners, etc.)

For other private event and corporate event packages, sound systems can also be provided for an additional fee if required.

We currently have crews serving Northern California, Southern California, the Northeast, Greater Denver, Austin/Houston and the Pacific Northwest areas. Additionally, we’re happy to travel and perform at destination events if our travel time and flights/accommodation are covered. We’ve traveled to Hawaii, various Mexico cities and even Thailand for events, so let us know if you’re interested in booking us outside our home areas.

We love that you’re interested in bringing live music into your event, but we no longer staff our musicians with outside DJs. We’ve learned the hard way that staffing a great horn player with even a great outside DJ leads to mixed experiences. All of the DJs in our crew are also musicians, and have a deep understanding of how the interplay between horns and the DJ sets work together. This is something that can take years to a lifetime to master.

Golden Bell is set up as a collective of full-time, touring musicians who tour the world and play on some of the biggest stages, from Coachella and Red Rocks Amphitheater to Bonnaroo and so many more. When you book us you’re booking the collective, and not any individual artists. We’re NOT a booking agency that will farm out inquiries to musicians we don’t know, and those in our crew are family – we practice routines together, share a music library and work hard to ensure the experience is consistently amazing between each of our events, regardless of who is assigned. =

We do all staffing and assignments about three months prior to each event, at which point our clients are introduced to the crew to start locking in music requests, logistics, etc. We set ourselves up this way to accommodate our touring schedules, which typically aren’t locked in until 3-4 months in advance. From the beginning, we’ve wanted Golden Bell to be supportive of musicians’ creative endeavors. Booking this way allows us to continue working with the highest level of musicians who would be unable to block their calendars off for a private event more than three months out.

We pride ourselves on our flexibility to incorporate any genre of music. Without any direction from a client and left to our own devices, we’d tend to play a healthy mix of funk, soul, R&B and disco remixes, but every one of our events is different and crafted around our clients’ preferences and desires.

As part of our process, we’ll send our clients a music questionnaire to submit a playlist they’ve put together for us to review. The questionnaire also includes a section for “must plays” and “do-not-plays”, which we pay close attention to.

Once we’ve gathered all these, we spend a great deal of time incorporating the new music alongside our own to put together a live set that feels perfectly curated for each event.