What is a house concert? The definition's flexible, but generally, it's a show that's presented in someone's home, or a nearby private space (barn, backyard, shearing tent, you name it). · Usually, but not always, the audience capacity is smaller than at a coffeehouse or club. · The money collected usually (but not always) goes straight to the performers, with no "profit motive" on the presenter's part. · Often, but not always, house concerts are conducted "by invitation" (for practical reasons we'll get into later), rather than as "public" concerts like a club or concert hall. · Often - again with exceptions - there is little or no "sound system" - performers play and sing acoustically, unless someone needs a little amp for their keyboard. · Refreshments, if any, are usually either a "pot luck" brought by the listeners, or provided by the hosts using a bit of the gate receipts. · Sometimes - but definitely not always - the performers get a meal and/or lodging with the presenters as part of their compensation. There are House Concerts being given in almost every part of the US and Canada. (If you have information about them happening in Europe or elsewhere in the music world, please let us know at the email address on the front cover.) Some house concerts are "one-shots," but most are presented as a series, usually every two to eight weeks over a "season" of anywhere from six to twelve months. Some concert rooms hold 200 people, some hold 20 or fewer. Some house concert series sell out every time, while others are lightly attended (without the presenters having to quit, as a for-profit club might!). Some are held inside, some outside. (There are reasons to prefer working inside if you can, as we'll see.) The whole house concert "scene" is a kaleidoscope of different experiences and personalities - and that's half the fun.

The parts of a house concert What does a house concert really need? It boils down to this: · A place to play · Performers to play there · People to come listen That's really it. Let's look at each part in detail. Then we'll run through a timeline. A place to play Choosing your performance room is an important step. Presenters have come up with ingenious solutions over the years - everything from driveways to haylofts to the master bedroom! But as you look at your house (barn, etc) and make your choices, think about the basics. · The performers will need a stage area of some kind - maybe just a throw rug, maybe something more elaborate. They'll need to get to and from the stage without bodily injury. When they're "on stage," they'll need to be seen and heard by your audience. · The audience will need seats of some kind, from which they can (again) see and hear the performers. They need to be able to get to and from those seats, not just at the beginning and end of the show but (to some extent) during, in case someone has a bladder attack or gets beeped by the Pentagon in mid-show. · Everyone - performers and audience alike - will need to be comfortable during the show in terms of temperature, glare, noise, smell, etc. And everyone needs to be able to get to the room itself, from the entryway of the house or yard, without risking life or limb. As a practical matter this means paying attention to G-L-A-D, which we'll cover in detail: · Getting around · Lighting and sightlines · Acoustics · Disturbances nearby Getting around - this basically means making sure people can reach your room and move around in it. You might have the perfect attic to play in, but you can't expect people to crawl up a spiral ladder to get to it. You might be able to cram 40 chairs into your den, but without aisles for the performers to get to and from the stage, and for listeners to get to and from their seats, it will be unworkable. The fewer staircases and twisty little hallways you make people traverse from the entryway to the "snack room" to the performance room, the better. Ideally, you would like the audience to enter towards the back of the room (away from where you put the stage) so guests won't cross in front of the performance once it's underway. At least one aisle on the side or center would then lead them into the seats. The performers can enter either the same way as the audience (with enough room to bring their guitars to and from the stage) or somewhere up front. [ Note: If you work out a particularly delicate solution to this problem that still lets you put 40 chairs in the room, you might want to draw a little layout of how it's supposed to be set up, and keep that handy (in a house notebook) for the day when two brand-new volunteers are setting everything up. ] Lighting and sightlines are perhaps the most-overlooked considerations in house concerts I've attended. When we live in our homes we pass from room to room and the lighting is often dim and haphazard. But when we are at a concert, focusing all our attention on a Susan McKeown or Ellis Paul or Karen Almquist twenty feet away in someone's living room, and they are backlit into harsh silhouettes by sun-glare bouncing off the neighbor's Chevy, or buried in murky gloom even though the sofa to their left is brilliantly lit, or blocked by sea of hair and shoulders, it tends to detract from the experience. Good lighting can be simple to do, and unobtrusive to the audience - it makes the whole show more enjoyable without the listeners ever quite noticing why. Good sightlines aren't always as easy, but at least you can do your best. Three simple rules for house concert lighting: · Highlight the performers · Dim (but don't black out) the background · Dim (but don't black out) the audience ("house"). Highlighting the performers is the biggest key. You don't want harsh glare, but gentle (and, if possible, tinted) illumination that flatters their skin tones while letting the audience see what their faces and hands are doing. I bought a pair of clamp lamps for $2 each from the local hardware store. Instead of conventional frosted white bulbs, I use standard base mini-spot bulbs that don't get too hot. With black PVC tape I cover each clamp lamp with an orange or blue "gel" - my only "theatrical supply" expense, but one that you can order at any lighting or party store or over the Internet, or ask your high school/college drama department to donate a couple of squares. (Don't use cellophane, it'll melt, real gels are made to take the heat.) After the first season I went to Home Depot and got a couple of in-line lamp dimmers, $5 each, and installed them on the clamp lamp power cords. This lets me "tune" the lights for day or night shows. Before each show I "focus" the lamps on the stage area, then ask a friend to stand on stage while I adjust the dimmers. Then I just plug them in at showtime. I mount the lights high and wide, well above the performers' sightline to the audience, at about a 90 degree angle from each other. (Stand on stage facing the house, hold your arms out in a wide V, tilt them upwards, and see where they end up pointing.) My rooms happen to have beams and stuff that I can clamp to; in a plaster ceilinged living room I would probably use a tension rod (from Sears curtain supply) mounted vertically along the side walls, unless bookcases or fixtures were nearby at the right height. The final effect - gentle orange light from one side, cool blue from the other - is awesome... except when I have a straggling line of three or four performers all over the stage, or a musician who likes to wander into the audience, but you can't control everything. Dimming the background helps you highlight the performers more easily, while minimizing distractions. (For a while I had a big wicker flower holder hanging on the wall right behind the performers in the rustic barn room at Grassy Hill. One day I watched a show and found my eyes wandering to the wicker thing. After that concert I hung it somewhere else. You don't want to upstage the musicians.) Just kill any extra lights (or windows) behind the stage. Dimming the house is done for the same reason. The reason you usually don't want to totally black out the house and the stage backdrop is that it kills the "house concert" ambience. As you look around, it should still look like a room at home. It's just that the brightest things in it are the performers. Acoustics is more of an art than a science, but in a house concert you really only have to watch out for a few things. The basics: sound comes from the performers, radiates outward in all directions (or at least not all straight towards the audience's ears), bounces around or is absorbed or whatever, and finally gets heard by your listeners. The more of the original sound that you can salvage and throw the audience's way, the louder and fuller what they hear will be. Since sound reflects off of flat surfaces and more or less dies on rough complicated ones (or in empty space), you can guess what will happen in various configurations. · Performing outside "in the middle of the yard" is practically impossible in a pure acoustic setting. Most of the sound flies away into the blue, and all the surrounding noise pours in to compete. This is why doing a house concert indoors is best unless you have a bandshell or a sound system (and no angry neighbors to complain about it). · In the middle of a big room with empty space behind - almost as bad unless the room is quite cozy. Sound flies away then bounces (delayed) off the far walls. · At one end of the room but smack in front of an open door or hallway - same problem. · At one end of the room but surrounded by curtains or paperback bookcases - nearly as bad. So what would be totally ideal? Think about classical recital halls. · Performing in front of an end wall of the room · Not plastered against the wall, but a little distance away · Wood (not glass, metal or plastic) surfaces nearby · Any reflective surfaces angled towards the audience if possible. We are lucky enough at Grassy Hill to have basically a couple of wooden rooms (it's an old farmhouse). I throw a rug on the floor near one wall and we're set. Even so, in the "long" room (which I only use when there are too many listeners for the smaller barn room), it can be a bit hard to hear in back unless there's a sound system. That's life. If you're trying to choose, throw some chairs in a room, have someone stand where you're thinking the stage might go, sing the Star Spangled Banner, and see how it sounds. Or put a boom box up there, not too loud, playing guitar/voice songs, and walk around the room listening. Disturbances refers to sights, sounds, smells etc that might drift in from nearby during a show and mess it up. Some (like swooshing cars on the road outside the window) you can avoid by the right choice of room, while others (the cappuccino maker, the phone, kids running around, a TV set) need rules/adjustments if you're going to neutralize the threat. Close certain doors, turn off the entertainment console, switch off the kitchen phone ringer, etc - these would all go in your checklist (see later) for day of show. If some disturbances can't be prevented - a heavily used phone or late arrivals through the back door, for instance - be prepared to station yourself or a helper to intercept them when they hit. Other things to think about: · A clock in the room, where the performer can see it. I went out and got one of those big $3.99 wall clocks from Staples. This helps avoid acts running "long"! · Adequate chairs. Your kitchen and dining room chairs may be fine, but overstuffed chairs and sofas are a very inefficient use of space, so watch out. When our audience first started to grow, I rented chairs from our nearest party store at 75 cents per chair, but after a few shows I went to them and said "Would you like to sell me some used chairs?" and they did, for $3 apiece, which paid for itself the first season - and best of all, I no longer had to schedule pickup and drop-off! Note: you may want to put some comfy cushions all the way up front, for kids and laid-back adults to sit on - it helps the sightlines and lets you squeeze a few more people in. But don't crowd the stage - and don't set up too many empties before you're sure how big your attendance is! Nothing looks more dismal than twelve people sitting in thirty chairs. · Someplace to put mailing lists and merchandise. The "merch," in particular, should be within your sight during the show, or else easy to put out of harm's way and take out again during intermission. You may prefer to pass around the mailing lists. I got one of those cheap pens on a chain and stuck it onto a legal size clipboard, and that' s where my mailing list lives. · Refreshment area - I'm assuming you know how to put on a coffee and cupcake get-together. Definitely get disposable supplies like cups, plates, napkins etc - if you use your personal utensils and crockery, they will break. Buy stuff in bulk from your local Costco or party warehouse, because you'll run through it. · Parking - you probably have enough room, but if you're in Pacific Heights or Park Slope or someplace else where parking is at a premium, make sure your directions include the location of the nearest garage! In the suburbs, decide whether you want to use the lawn, the road, or whatever, and let your guests know. Since your performers will (hopefully) arrive early, make sure you don't block in anyone who needs to leave before the others. · Setup and cleanup - the first few times you do this all by yourself, you'll be so euphoric at your successful show you won't care, but eventually you'll start to hate it. So try to get some help - including asking listeners to pick up after themselves when they leave. Make sure there are trashcans or wastebaskets handy. · Accommodations - If the performer has indicated they'd like to use the guestroom, make sure you have one and that it's clean and suitable. Ditto for dinner afterwards or other hospitality. Try to make it clear (at least by the morning of the show) what hospitality you will be providing. Never force hospitality on a performer! One of the horror stories you most often hear is when Such-and-so played this house concert after 23 days on the road, all they wanted was to get to the motel and kick back and watch CNN, but the hosts practically blocked the doorway and made them stay and eat yucko food in a messy house with squalling kids while they peppered them with dumb questions, etc. A house concert is not a petting zoo for folk performers. Offer what you can, have alternatives ready, and accept the musicians' decision with a smile. Getting performers to play at your concert Booking your shows is one of the most fun and interesting parts of presenting house concerts. When you get going regularly, you will get a chance to juggle schedules, evaluate talent, negotiate with players and their representatives, and - most rewardingly - express your own musical tastes in the way you "build a show" or a series. Each show needs at least one performer, but from there on it's entirely up to you. You might have a 4-person song swap, a "micless open mic," a single solo artist, a two-performer co-bill, a traditional "opener" and "headliner," or variations on these; and you might change this from one show to the next. At Grassy Hill I have done most of these with great results. Who will play at your show? You'd be surprised! Many well-known folk and acoustic performers enjoy playing house concerts, and lots of others are curious to try it. And of course, local and beginning performers will be delighted to have the exposure (although they may draw fewer guests at first - or maybe more!). A good rule of thumb: if someone is still playing coffeehouses, and not selling out 600 seat halls, you can probably "get" them, if you route properly (we'll come to that). When in doubt, ask! (We'll come to that part too.) Your mission, Jim... This is also where your own aesthetic vision (or other mission) comes into the picture. You may love Celtic traditional music and want to bring more of it to your town. You may be trying to develop what you think is a promising local music scene by showcasing hometown performers. You may want to help raise funds for a kidney dialysis machine for the local senior center. There are lots of legitimate missions for a series, and your booking will reflect yours. (Grassy Hill, for example, is focused on strong songwriting, and that has a very big effect on decisions.)