In the middle of a pandemic, one of the most popular methods of keeping up with fans that artists have clung to has been livestreaming performances on social media. For Noah Pando, a local electronic artist that performs as B3Nii, it’s a way to connect with his fans in Chico.

He recently started doing live sets through Instagram Live in a soon-to-be running series of performances. The Orion got to chat with Pando to find out the details on what is up next for this socially distanced series.

I heard that you started doing some livestream performances?

B3Nii: (Oct. 11) was my first one but I’ll be doing one every Monday hopefully called “Sunset Sessions,” sponsored by ImShmacked where we go around to different locations in Chico and bring on guest DJs to DJ during the sunset hours. Next Monday will be our first official livestream on ImShmacked at the lookout point up Skyway Rd. This last livestream was more of a trial run. All of these live-streams will be hosted by me, though.

Is there a theme you’ll go for? EDM? Or something else?

Not particularly, I wanna bring as many different styles to the livestream I can to gain as much exposure as I can. I’ll do a set on the livestream once a month though, the reason I don’t wanna DJ every week is so I don’t oversaturate myself to my audience and to keep them guessing what the next one will be. I’ll probably bring a fair amount of EDM DJs though because I’m very connected to that scene as of now. But I already have a hip hop and Latin DJ that wants to do it in the next coming weeks.

What was your goal with this livestream? Obviously, livestreaming is something that artists have really been leaning into for the past few months, all with different goals, but what do you hope to get out of this experience?

The first thing I want out of it is for my audience to see me on a more personable/relatable level. I hope to achieve this by not DJing but hosting this stream. The second thing I want is to appeal and gain exposure from the locals here in Chico and that’s why all the locations I’ll be streaming in are gonna be very recognizable if you live here in Chico. For Example like the Lookout Point, Bear Hole, and One Mile.

So you said you just had your first one. How’d it go?

It was really successful. We had over 100 total viewers when I was expecting maybe 30-40. I did it on my profile on IG live which is a lot smaller than the ImShmacked profile. So I think once we start going live on their page it’s really gonna take off and we can expect anywhere from 500-1000 viewers!

With backing from one of the biggest Instagram profiles in the Chico area, it seems that B3Nii is looking to make a name for himself amongst Chico natives.

You can follow Noah Pando on Instagram @b3nii.official, and you will be able to catch his livestreams on IG Live @imschmackedchico.

Thomas Stremfel can be reached at [email protected] or @tomstremfel on Twitter.