A day at Little Hills moves through the trees: a company welcome or a wedding ceremony in the open air, drinks on the grass, then dinner under a draped tent and dancing under the stars outside San Ramon. I handle the sound, the microphone and the timeline at every stop, so you can simply be there.
Little Hills is a private outdoor event venue on Bollinger Canyon Road, in the rolling hills outside San Ramon. Redwoods, bay laurels and oaks stand around the grounds, and Las Trampas Regional Wilderness is next door. You'll see it listed as Little Hills Events, and it was formerly The Ranch at Little Hills.
The land belongs to the East Bay Regional Park District's Little Hills Regional Recreation Area, a reservation-only picnic park. That history shows. It's a place built for groups to gather outside, and it hosts company picnics and corporate events as readily as it hosts a ceremony and reception.
For the music, all of that open air matters. There are no walls to carry a voice, so a toast needs a real microphone and a speaker pointed at the people listening. Guests move from one spot to the next, and the sound has to be there before they are. And because this is park land beside a wilderness, the venue has its own rules for amplified music. I already plan inside them.
Dinner is under a softly draped white tent on the Terrace, with warm lighting overhead and a bar. The dance floor is outside it, under the stars: in my photos the first dance and the dancing are on the open patio, with the tent glowing behind. Open air holds no sound in, so I aim the speakers at the dance floor and keep the dinner tables at a level people can talk over.
Ceremonies happen in the open air with old trees around them. The venue has more than one site for them, and the Golden Plateau is one. Nothing out there carries a voice to the back row, so the site you're given gets a small system of its own, separate from the tent.
Open grass where guests gather for drinks before dinner. It wants light music you can talk over, and if it sits away from the tent, I plan a second sound zone or a speaker placed to reach it.
In my photos from here I'm set up on a railed wooden deck with beams overhead, the dance floor and the lit tent right behind me, a mic on a stand beside me. I settle the DJ spot with the venue for your layout. What I look for is the same: close enough to read the floor.
An outdoor venue where people gather in one place, have drinks in another and eat in a third is really three small events in a row. I set it up that way.
The spot among the trees gets its own system: a speaker aimed at your guests and a wireless mic. For a wedding that's the officiant, the vows and the processional cued. For a company day it's the welcome and the announcements. The tent system is already up and tested, so the music is waiting when people walk over.
There are no walls here to shelter a microphone. I carry backup equipment and keep a second mic set up and within reach, so if the wind takes one out during a toast under the trees, I switch and the toast goes on. Most hosts never learn what I quietly swapped.
A ceremony spot, the lawns and a tent are three places to carry gear to. The venue builds at least two hours of setup into a rental before guests arrive, and there's a parking lot on site, so I use that window and have every spot ready before your guests park. My estimate asks whether there's an outlet near the ceremony and the setup. Where there isn't, I settle the power for that spot with the venue ahead of the day, not that afternoon.
I plan the timeline to the end time you choose: entrances and toasts early, dinner with room to breathe, and a full stretch of dancing before the last song you chose. The venue has music off by 10 p.m. at the latest, and that limit is already in my plan.
Somebody has to know when dinner is called, who speaks first, which song starts the dancing and how long is left before the music stops. At a venue with this many stops, that somebody should be the person holding the microphone. That's me. Before the day there's a planning questionnaire and calls about the music and the order of things, so by the time I arrive I already know your event inside and out.
Then I call the venue. Outside vendors here sign the venue's care waiver and provide a certificate of insurance, and I handle both myself. What's left is the list below, settled for your date.
The uplighting in these photos is mine. I lit the tent from inside in magenta and purple, so it glows behind the first dance, and put a blue beam across the dance patio. The string lights in the trees and along the edge of the tent are the venue's, and so is the warm lighting that hangs inside it.
Step away from the tent at night and the hills go dark fast. That's where my lighting earns its place: uplighting on the tent or the trees around it, dance-floor lighting that moves once dinner is cleared, or a monogram or pattern projected where guests walk in. Color is your call, and each one is an add-on you choose in the instant estimate.
Little Hills hosts corporate events, business functions, company picnics and rehearsal dinners alongside ceremonies and receptions. I play all of those. A company day wants a clear microphone for the announcements and music that keeps a lawn full of people relaxed. A birthday or milestone celebration under the tent wants a dance floor that opens on time.
If you want a sound more than a program, a Selector Session is a set of my own music for a welcome party, a dinner or an after-party. And the Journey, a live sound bath that flows into a facilitated ecstatic dance, suits a place where the trees do half the work.
Clubs, festival stages and every venue from Napa Valley to the coast are on one page: Places I've played.
Your date, the kind of event and the feeling you want under those trees. The instant estimate takes a couple of minutes, or book a short call and I'll take it from there.
