EVA Celebrates Tenth Anniversary, Sets “EVAlution Fest” in Nashville To Mark The Occasion

Since 2015 founding at Belmont University, corporate events booking platform has paid out $6M for entertainers, including $3.5M for Nashville performers

Register to attend EVAlution Fest, April 16th at Eastside Bowl, HERE

EVA, the entertainment tech company that connects performers with corporate and private events, is celebrating its tenth birthday this April. To mark the occasion, the Nashville-based startup is throwing a mini-festival, called “EVAlution Fest,” on April 16th at Eastside Bowl.

EVA was founded in 2015 by college roommates and best friends Channing Moreland and Makenzie Stokel in Nashville after they kept running into the same issues while booking live music as students at Belmont University. They thought "there's got to be a better way," and decided to build it: now, EVA is an Airbnb-esque filter system that allows entertainers and clients alike to set parameters like rates, available dates, genres, and more. For performers, it provides new sources of revenue by connecting them with conferences, summits, Christmas parties, and other paid gigs with regularity for the first time. And for event bookers, it provides a more streamlined booking process than ever before.

Since the Belmont days, EVA has put more than six million dollars in working performers pockets across the country, with more than $3.5 million of that going to local Nashville entertainers. Their first gigs were campus-based – an early adviser even told them to rebrand as fratbookings.com, which they smartly declined knowing the value of corporate events – but over the years, they’ve helped put on events in Nashville for organizations as varied as Healthtrust and Bank of America, to Smile Direct Club and the Nashville Predators. Venues, too, have leveled up, from tiny bars, pizza places, and porches to Gaylord Opryland, Music City Convention Center, and Bridgestone Arena. For one event in 2022 that they facilitated on behalf of a household-name fast food brand, they shut down the entire stretch of Broadway, bought out every single bar and honky tonk, and booked 28 artists to perform.

Overall, EVA’s booked 2,400+ events in the city, and has worked with over 785 local performers. Some of those, like Trace Adkins, Nate Smith, Kylie Morgan, and Lady A’s Charles Kelley, are already known quantities in Music City, but most of the talent EVA works with are real working artists and entertainers building their incomes gig-by-gig, for whom the reliable, well-paid corporate event opportunities offered by EVA are a total gamechanger. Local singer-songwriter Tabitha Meeks calls EVA the reason she was able to buy her house. One band, The Magi, say they wouldn’t still be a group if not for EVA. For cirque performer Grace Good, EVA has majorly expanded her business, the Moga Family Band credit EVA with their rise in popularity, and many other Nashville entertainers have similar stories as well.

To celebrate these successes, the April 16th EVAlution Fest event won’t just be a party, it will be a testament to how EVA has redefined corporate entertainment. Held at East Nashville’s Eastside Bowl, the mini-festival will feature genre-spanning live performances from artists within the EVA community, surprise pop-up sets, interactive art installations, and more.

Since its origins as a dorm room startup, EVA has raised millions in funding (including an oversubscribed two million dollar funding round which closed this past summer - read more at TechCrunch HERE), launched in seven additional cities beyond Nashville (Austin, Charlotte, Atlanta, Dallas, Chicago, New Orleans, NYC), and worked with clients nationwide such as Amazon Web Services, LinkedIn, and Dell. But as they’ve gone national, Nashville has remained home - Channing and Makenzie return to speak at Belmont entrepreneurship classes, and partnered with the university to launch their podcast “Freshmen Founders.”

2024 was a year of major growth for EVA - it arrived in NYC, saw revenue double, and built out its talent roster to more than a dozen types of entertainers. The afore-mentioned $2M funding round included Justin Kalifowitz of Downtown Music, the former President and COO of SESAC, the founders of Songfinch, and others. The Director of Global Brand Strategy and Management at Instagram also joined the EVA board in the round. Kalifowitz said "Channing and Makenzie were early in recognizing the need for a trusted platform that could bridge the gap between these [live entertainment and corporate events], and have been flawlessly executing on their mission ever since.”

Watch this space for more from EVA in Nashville and nationwide, and for more details about EVAlution Fest!