Our History
Name Origin - The Band
In the mid 90’s, Phlume Founder, Chad Fillion was in a small bar-band in the burgeoning music scene of Portsmouth NH. While settling on a name for the past-time open mic trio, “Snōboat Flume” was agreed upon for its whimsical foolishness and absurd imagery. The three members of the band were represented as penguins, and the “boat” they rode upon was one that drove upon snow, traveling down a flume. It was a goofy image that only Woody Woodpecker’s “Chilly Willy” could appreciate. However, the eclectic name only reinforced the band’s distinct sound; made up of a jam-band centered singer/songwriter on acoustic guitar, a melodic Pink Floyd-esque electric guitar lead, and a double kick loving for-the-last-time-use-your- brushes heavy-metal drummer. To add a spin on the name, the “PH” replaced the “F” in Flume to pay homage to Phish. Snōboat Phlume was born.
As time passed, Chad went off to college and aligned himself with bands in the Phoenix Metro area. He worked as a web designer, videographer, and eventual band manager learning the music scene from within the trenches. After graduating college and pursuing the band live in Arizona for a few years, the East coast called again.
Band Management
Phlume Artist Management started around 2004 when Chad returned to southern Maine and began work officially as a band manager. “Phlume Artist Management” was born to assist local and regional bands. A handful gained success through the northeast region under the guidance of Phlume Artist Management. (View us back then with the waybackmachine on archive.org)
We offered guidance and structure to young bands around Boston and Seacoast New England area. Booking, marketing, design services, and management were the primary focus of the company at the time. Part of our marketing concentration for these bands was doing video production, sound engineering, and lighting design for live performances. We worked as creative directors for multiple CD releases organizing the cd replication, artwork approval (and at times creation), and final CD mastering.
North Country Relocate
As time passed we situated ourselves in the Littleton/Lancaster NH area helping the local access channel and small businesses with their video production and broadcasting needs. In August of 2017 Phlume MEDIA LLC was founded in Lancaster NH. Clients ranged from local musicians and special event coverage to educational pieces for NH and VT school districts. Municipal coverage of live events, live-streams of local concerts and coverage of theatrical performances all became part of the growth pattern of Phlume MEDIA through its early development stages.
Livestreaming Birth
In the spring of 2018, Phlume aligned with Northeast Sports Network to provide production expertise to a variety of High School softball and baseball games. Working with NSN, Phlume produced live-stream coverage of local and regional games. It began a partnership between the two companies that extended through the 2018-2019 sports season. With the partnership also came the need to expand form a small 3 person staff to a team of 9-10 individuals.
Recovery Friendly
In Fall of 2018, NH Governor Chris Sununu started a statewide program called the Recovery Friendly Workplace initiative. It was developed in part as a way to help reduce the stigma of individuals with substance misuse problems. Phlume MEDIA was an early adopter of the RFW program and made a commitment to keep the workplace free from the stigma and intolerance that often is associated with drug and alcohol abuse and misuse problems. and in June of 2019, they were designated as an official Recovery Friendly workplace.
Expansion Opportunities
In the Summer of 2019, we split ties with NSN and Phlume MEDIA launched it’s own streaming network, branded as PhlumeStream Entertainment Network. Partnering with local and regional content creators, as well as other small businesses, PhlumeStream began covering live events live events, concerts, and municipal gatherings for the rural Northern NH region. We continued to grow until life stopped us dead in our tracks.
In addition to our expansion with livestreaming, Phlume MEDIA acquired North Country Local, a Facebook community of North Country citizens dedicated to local small businesses. The Facebook Page is a contest driven community that gives away free gift certificates to small businesses. It was a perfect brand that allowed Phlume to communicate on a very introductory level with small business owners and lay the foundation for future marketing and advertising opportunities for them.
Crazy COVID
As Spring of 2020 rolled in, COVID tested our mettle. We shut down, with much of the world for nearly 3 months. We gathered thoughts, set out a plan and worked towards developing better systems for growth. And grow we did.
We reinvested energy in branding and marketing, invested capital in new equipment and consolidated our offices into the current location on Main Street in Lancaster. Fall of 2020 came in and we began broadcasting more regional games and live concerts on our network and continued with our primary focus of producing the highest quality productions around.
Continued growth and development
With COVID (mostly) behind us in the Summer of 2021, we added more staff, and additional equipment and grew from a single-room office space to three rooms of offices in Lancaster. We now have a production studio, a office space, and a staff room for meetings, and heating up yesterday’s leftovers.
On the sports production end, we developed our own internal scoring system to produce live stats in-game for High School Sports. This proprietary system helped us gain an edge over the competition and offer our viewers something no other organization is doing at the High School level. We continued to add new web design and video production clients, expand our regional contests with North Country Local and deliver studio programming from our expanded office space in Lancaster.
What the future holds, we can only dream…however, we are certainly along for a continued journey of fun and exciting times! Thanks for taking the time to read about us.
-Chad Fillion, Founder/owner, Phlume MEDIA
…and singer/songwriter acoustic guitar playing hippie.