Episode Details

Dave Silver didn’t grow up with a roadmap for building a creative empire. He was a goofy kid from Warminster, Bucks County, who loved sports, found his first real sense of leadership in his Jewish youth community, and discovered his creative side almost by accident through high school media classes. He met his future co‑founder Will Toms because their last names — Silver and Toms — sat them next to each other in class. Before long, they were “the video guys” at school, taking over afternoon announcements, with Dave as the weatherman, and quietly laying the foundation for what would become REC Philly.

In this episode of Call Sheet Confessions, Dave and I dive into how a kid who picked advertising at Temple University mostly because he liked Mad Men and wanted an “easy major” ended up co‑founding one of Philly’s most important creative hubs. We walk through his journey from frat basement concerts and the Broad Street Music Group, to launching and losing a record label, to building a 10,000 sq. ft. state‑of‑the‑art creative facility… and then making the agonizing decision to close it. Dave opens up about what it really looks like to build something from scratch, scale too fast, survive a pandemic, confront burnout, and then completely redesign your life on your own terms.

We get into:
• Growing up outside Philly as a goofy, sports‑loving kid who only really found direction in high school through leadership in his Jewish youth organization
• Meeting his future business partner Will Toms in high school, becoming “the video guys,” and taking over their school’s afternoon announcements
• Choosing advertising at Temple almost at random, not loving school, and pouring his energy into extracurriculars: a Jewish fraternity, media and advertising clubs, and student leadership
• The capstone project at Temple (Diamond Edge Communication) that became his first real event — booking a band, raising sponsorships, creating graphics — and realizing how much he loved event planning
• Treating frat parties like a business: staffing, logistics, booking DJs, and turning his basement into a full‑on venue called the Broad Street Music Lounge
• Getting kicked out of that basement over a “$2M insurance policy,” and how that forced him to level up from house shows to real venues across Philadelphia
• Building Broad Street Music Group into an event production company, throwing concerts Monday–Thursday at multiple venues while still in college
• Acting as a de facto manager/opportunity‑maker for a close friend and using every show to put local artists on stage and in front of media
• Trying to evolve into a community record label, running a Kickstarter that ultimately failed, and how that “failure” became the catalyst for the birth of REC Philly
• Turning a rough North Philly warehouse into a scrappy creative hub with DIY studios and stages, and then evolving that into a 10,000 sq. ft. Center City facility with 12 production studios, concert spaces, and a full membership model
• The explosive growth from 100 to 900 members almost overnight, and what it felt like to see their long‑imagined space finally become real
• The brutal timing of opening in December 2019, then immediately getting hit by the COVID‑19 pandemic — shutting down, laying off team members, and scrambling to reinvent the business
• Pivoting REC Philly into a virtual production hub, working with corporate partners, and distributing relief funds to local creators during the pandemic
• Why REC never fully regained its original momentum post‑lockdown, how investor pressure and impatience led to expanding too quickly, and the hard lessons that came with that
• Making the decision to close REC Philly (final closure in Dec