Chamber member collaboration supports local bands, beer

Chamber members The Jones Assembly and Lively Beerworks have partnered to produce The Lively Concert Series, which offers free live music on the Jones patio stage Tuesday-Friday with local musicians, in addition to specialty craft beers brewed especially for The Social Order concepts.

The series, which started in April, will continue throughout the fall, offering live, local music from 5:30 – 8:30 p.m. It began as Local Tap in 2020 as a way to help support local musicians during the pandemic. The series was rebranded Music First the following year, then became the Lively Concert Series after the groups began collaborating on specialty beers for some of The Social Order’s restaurants.

Lively Beerworks Director of Sales and Marketing Nicholas Williams said working with The Social Order was a natural given their organizations’ shared interest in community.

“Working with The Social Order, they bring so much to Oklahoma City, especially on the music scene,” he said. “Not only to have the big music acts at The Jones, but also helping out our community and bringing cool shows and talent to the local series where we can showcase young and up-and-coming artists, and really dive into what makes OKC, OKC – that has been awesome. So it was a no-brainer joining up.”

“We’re excited to continue our local concert series and supporting our home grown talent,” said Graham Colton, partner at The Social Order. “We couldn’t ask for better partners than Lively Beerworks to carry the torch and help us spread the word.”

The Social Order currently offers three specialty Lively collab beers on their menus: “Concert Beer” at The Jones Assembly, a light lager; “Rainbow Sprinkles,” a tasty vanilla-rich cream ale originally made with Spark at Scissortail Park but now also available the The Jones and Fuzzy’s Edmond, Bricktown and Chisholm Creek locations; and “Fear the Reaper,” a light lager available at Dave’s Hot Chicken in Bricktown, which just opened last week.

Williams said the respective businesses’ locations also came into play in forming the collaboration in a fortuitous way.

“We do a bunch of beers in the in the brewery that are just tap-room exclusives. So their bartenders were coming in after work and drinking,” he said, noting that at the time, employees were enjoying Lively’s Light Lager, which became the base for two of the collab beers, the Concert Beer and Fear the Reaper. The popular Rainbow Sprinkles cream ale has a similarly serendipitous origin.

“During a meeting, Spark’s operational manager was talking about their vanilla ice cream, and we thought we should try something that paired well with that, so we tried to pile in the flavor of the vanilla bean and see what was going to be a good range,” said Williams. “We have a base cream ale recipe that we thought would go really well with those flavors. It’s got enough body and enough crispness to really carry through the vanilla. So we just kind of went from there, not knowing it would turn into what it is, but more of a ‘let’s just see what happens’ thing. And now we have people who will have one at the park and then come on by here and pick up another six pack for home.”

Stay tuned to https://www.thejonesassembly.com/ for more information and lineup details throughout the fall, and support local live music wherever it may be in OKC.

The author would like to thank Annie Tucker of The Social Order, and Alena Chesney and Nick Williams of Lively Beerworks for their help with this article.