Song Soup: Santa Monica’s Coziest House Show
Sing a song, break some bread, make a friend.
Singer-songwriter Emily Laliotis is pioneering this warmer take on a house show. Song Soup is a house show, a bowl of homemade soup, and a curated setlist of songwriters who are equally as talented writers as they are performers. It started almost by accident in December 2024. She and her husband had just moved into a house with enough space to finally host something, and Emily decided to throw herself a birthday show. A beautiful evening with friends and family turned into a showcase house show hybrid that has “served’ many through its months in existence.
The soup part is designed to be as practical as it is cozy. “We were thinking about what we could feed a lot of people with very easily, and relatively cheaply,” Emily said. It was December, so soup was the obvious winter choice. Emily makes the soup and the bread herself (it is usually vegetarian, often vegan). Sometimes the soup comes from a proper recipe, sometimes she cooks what she affectionately calls “trash soup”. Which is soup from whatever’s in the fridge and transformed into something delicious.
Emily is deliberately keeping Song Soup pure in name and spirit. “The icky parts are people who are coming just to get booked, and for no other reason,” she told us. This is not said as a judgment, but as a reminder of the culture for this showcase. Emily hopes that even folks who might come with that intent end up leaving with a renewed sense of community and “why” for making music.
Song Soup is built to be a listening room. No chitchat over the songs, real conversations & back-and-forth with the audience, and a chance for artists to actually be heard by people who might become fans.
Emily is a songwriter and gigging cover artist herself. She intimately understands the grind of booking shows in LA. What she aims to share with those who attend her showcase is that this is so much more than a performance opportunity. It is a chance to connect, sing along together, and break actual bread. One of the goals of Song Soup is to preserve the warm and fuzzies that it attracts.
That community has turned out to be a mix of working musicians and people who just love a good hang: neighbors, friends of friends, a handful of regulars. Emily’s still figuring out how to pull in more non-musicians, especially on the west side of LA, where she felt something cozy and community-minded was missing. It’s part of why the singer-songwriter sets stay stripped down in the cooler months, then open up into full-band backyard shows in summer.
And every night ends the same way: everyone sings together.
“I think that singing together is one of the most human activities that we can engage in,” Emily said, “where music can often feel very exclusive and put up on a pedestal... I think it’s very important that we remember that it is of and for the people.”
The sing-along lineup has ranged from Ring of Fire and Country Roads to, “What’s Up” by 4 Non Blondes. These songs are chosen exclusively by 1) how recognizable they are and 2) how good they feel to belt out in a room full of new friends.
What’s next for Song Soup? Well with a new bundle of joy about to enter the household, Song Soup might have to take a little pause. But after that? More showcases and perchance a tour. Song Soup has already started to travel. Friends and family have hosted “themed” versions of it on tour stops, and Emily’s parents have even run one in San Diego. Her bigger dream is to take it on the road as a real touring template, and maybe hand the reins to guest hosts in other neighborhoods.
Asked for her dream lineup, she didn’t hesitate: Anaïs Mitchell, John Prine reincarnate, and herself of course! Want to hear some of Emily’s work? Check out her most recent EP, Back To Dirt.
The next Song Soup is Sunday, August 30th at 7pm. Featuring performances by Molly Oran, Justin Nash Fisher, and Jolene Dixon. Bring a jacket! Santa Monica nights get cool, and the soup is only so powerful. ;)
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