If you’ve ever been involved in a local music scene, no matter the city, you’re no doubt familiar with the temporality of the spaces it occupies. Bars, DIY venues, arts spaces, house show basements come and go, whether due to financial strain, noise complaints, police and government crackdowns, burnout - anything and everything, and sometimes all of the above. These spaces live on in the collective memory of the people who occupied them, who created in them, who socialized and flourished and yelled and danced and cried in them. But as time goes by, they all start to fade. A word or phrase might conjure up a memory of a great show, or passing by the front door of a once lively space might prod you with a bittersweet feeling, but every day they become a little more faint. When it comes to Vancouver’s Greylab, Jackson Iseli wasn’t quite ready to let that happen.
On the venue’s all-day final blowout show featuring over a dozen bands and a full-to-the-brim space filled with familiar faces:
“It was kinda like this mythic thing in my head…I felt really inspired by the amount of people that turned out to see it out, ‘cause of what it stood for and how much it meant to some people, and I wanted that to continue.”
Not a unique sentiment for sure, for anyone who attended that legendary show, or for the many who once attended or played a Greylab show. Over its brief ten month-long lifespan the space quickly became one of the central spaces of Vancouver’s music community. More than a handful of rising Vancouver bands had their first shows there, same for many show goers, and the venue was instrumental in building audiences for dozens of artists and provided a third space and sense of community for hundreds of people. After mounting pressure from the city and financial strain, in August 2025 the organizers finally had to concede and close its doors. But Jackson saw what the venue meant, and wasn’t ready to let that go.
It really feels like fate that Iseli was meant to work throwing shows. Not only is photography - his first open door into exploring the community of the music scene - a practice that runs through multiple generations of his family, but his dad was a part of the yvr scene in the 90s as part of a ska-punk band (Babblefish X, if you’re curious), AND his family ran a fine arts school. That meant Jackson grew up surrounded by creativity and working in live theatre, doing everything from acting to pulling sets to calling shows. But all of this really crystallized together, unbeknownst to him at the time, when a friend from school invited him out to a local band showcase at The Cobalt in early 2025. A connection with one of the bands led to photography gigs, which led him eventually through the doors of Greylab, and he never really stopped going in.
After connecting with and nerding out over cameras with Greylab’s owner and manager Mungo Dulmage, Jackson quickly found himself at the venue every weekend, an open invite as long as he had a camera on him. That led to joining the staff, and led him down a path that has largely defined where he’s at now. Shortly after that final show, Iseli pitched to Mungo the ideas that formed into what Greylab has now become.
Under Jackson’s management, Greylab has transitioned to hosting larger scale events at The Hollywood Theatre in Kitsilano. Jackson has thrown three events now - Crash Test Fest, Summerfest and Homecoming Fest, with plans for more throughout the next year and beyond. When asked if moving away from a brick and mortar venue to throwing shows at existing venues was a conscious choice or a result of the unfortunate realities of trying to exist as a music venue in the no fun city…well, it’s a bit of both. Iseli has high standards. It would cost, in his words:
“Tens of thousands of dollars to have it up to the standard that I would want.”
Luckily, The Hollywood Theatre, a beautiful and criminally underused (at least for live music) six hundred capacity room in a great location saw the vision. That vision? The vibes, the DIY feel and the community of a local music scene, but elevated at a bigger scale and made to feel special, unique and exciting.
“I saw with the final Greylab show that we ran out of space. With the amount of people that want to come out to these shows, I don't wanna limit people or turn people away. I just managed to find the space that really wanted to help out. From the get go, before Crash Test Fest, before they saw what we were doing, the one that wanted to support it was The Hollywood. I'm very grateful for The Hollywood, because they gave me a chance. They saw what I wanted to do, and they wanted to support it.”
The Greylab events - or fests, as they’re affectionately and accurately titled - feel special, and that’s by design. These aren’t your everyday local shows. These aren't the same bands at the same venues weekend after weekend. Jackson purposely spaces things out, carefully considers the artist lineup, the ebb and flow of the night, and puts a huge six (most recently even seven) all local band bill together, with a mix of established and breaking artists and newer exciting talent - all with the idea of taking what you could find at a DIY venue any weekend, but elevating it to a huge scale and blowing it out.
“Every show is a special thing to remind people of what this place was, and to keep that legacy going. I wanted to pick bands that I personally saw had potential and I wanted to see them go places. I want to try and take people, and I want to take what they're doing and put them on a bigger stage in front of a bigger audience to help grow them.”
It’s easy to tell from talking to Jackson that the scale of things is important to him. When asked for some highlights from the first three fests, it often came back to this. Some moments he noted included seeing “nearly 500 people in the room for Chronic Fatigue, with five people crowdsurfing at the same time” at Crash Test Fest, seeing 300+ people show up for Benzonn, the opening band at Summerfest, or watching Junny Chen, guitarist and vocalist of Chopping Spree, awe-struck by the crowd they were playing to.
“I've seen Chopping Spree play a ridiculous amount of times. I know those guys personally. I love them so much. I've seen Junny play to some crazy crowds. I remember I was standing on the left side of the stage, and I was watching him look at the crowd in utter amazement and awe. Chopping Spree played all these ridiculous shows over the past couple years. Seeing him be like absolutely, I mean, like in a daze…so many of the big experiences, I gotta say, really tie down to seeing the people that I put on stage happy.”
Of course, that’s not to say it’s all about the bands. At the end of the day, Jackson just wants to give back to a community that has given a lot.
“All my personal improvements, all the photography work I’ve gotten, all the cool experiences I’ve had recently are due in part to the fact that I started going to the scene. People gave me guestlist, encouraged my work, wanted to see me come out to their shows. Like, all of this is in part and thanks to that, and I want to give it back.”
The space that Greylab once occupied may sit empty now, but its spirit is more alive than ever in the city. It’s grown past a physical space and isn’t stopping anytime soon. At least as long as Jackson is involved.
“Despite the high risk, low reward that this kind of work does entail, taking that risk is very important for me to do because of the benefits I can see that it gives others, you know? The benefits that it can produce outweigh the negatives in my head.
Is that logical? Maybe not. But it's what I think.”