Come on-a my house
House concerts are the ultimate intimate venue -- and sometimes the hosts even kick in meals and lodging
St. Louis Post-Dispatch, July 31, 2005
“I really have to apologize to those who have the rump view,” Caitlin Cary says, addressing a few people seated on a couch behind her. She nods at her microphone, angled cater-corner toward that of her singing and songwriting partner, Thad Cockrell, and adds, “We really have to gaze into each other’s eyes. It’s part of the duets mythos.”
Never mind the rump view. Pretty much everyone gathered to see and hear Cary and Cockrell perform last Sunday night had what amounted to a front-row seat and an all-access backstage pass. But the show didn’t take place at any of the bars or clubs the pair had played on previous trips through town – Cockrell as a solo act and Cary on her own, with her current band, Tres Chicas, or with the now-defunct Ryan Adams star vehicle, Whiskeytown.
This concert took place at a private residence: the Clayton home of Rick and Nancy Wood.
Do it yourself
House concerts are nothing new, of course. There have been recitals performed in front of intimate gatherings pretty much as long as there’s been music. More recent eras have given us house parties, rent parties, and all manner of events involving music, friends and/or family, and more than likely, respectable quantities of beer.
But these days, as the tendency of the music business is to do everything big or not at all, house concerts have become a means for artists to sidestep the industry somewhat and instead embrace the age-old do-it-yourself ethic.
Established artists have been using occasional house concerts to reconnect with members of their audience, who have perhaps tired of seeing their favorite acts in large, impersonal arenas or the same smoky clubs.
For others, who, like Cary and Cockrell, operate at a fairly modest level, house concerts can earn them a few extra dollars, but also help to build an audience, even if it’s only a few dozen people at a time. To be sure, the person who gets to hang out and have a conversation, or even a meal, with the band, is more likely to become a fan of longstanding than if they’d simply gone to a standard-issue show.
House concerts can be especially satisfying experiences for the musicians, too.
“These shows tend to be so much more predictably great than what you’re gonna get when you get thrust into this or that club,” Cary says. “In those situations, you never know what you’re getting.”
Before Sunday night, Cary had played only one house concert.
“The guy had a real sprawling place and rented a tent,” she says. “It looked sort of like a wedding setup. I think there were 200 people there. These things can be big or small.”
At the Woods’ house, the audience numbered about 50, most of whom brought both food and a $10 strictly voluntary donation, all of which went to the band. There were just enough people to fill the room comfortably, as a few souls walked around to sample the potluck supper or check the Cardinals/Cubs game on TV in the front room.
Spread the Word
The show was put together with remarkable speed. Cary and Cockrell are not on the sort of house concert tour that is becoming more common these days, especially among acoustic music troubadours. They were simply trying to fill in a date between scheduled shows in Milwaukee and Nashville.
Roughneck Music promoter and booking agent Marie Arsenault, who once booked Cockrell’s solo shows, got a call from the band on Thursday, asking if she could line up a local venue. When no club date could be secured, Arsenault suggested a house concert.
“I remembered that the last time Thad played here, he played at Frederick’s (Music Lounge),” Arsenault says. “That night, he stayed with Rick’s friend Dave Melson (bassist for St. Louis group Waterloo) and his wife, Angie. Angie is a huge fan, and I thought she might be interested in a house concert. She couldn’t do it, but then Rick said, ‘I’ll do it.’”
“This wasn’t the first time it’s come up,” Wood says. “We always thought, you know, one day we’d like to do something like this. I was a little sheepish (about asking his wife), but she’s always very supportive of whatever I want to do. She said, ‘Sure that’d be great.’”
The couple previously hosted after-concert parties for touring bands, and they’ve invited some of them, including Milton Mapes, Grand Champeen and the Handsome Family, to spend the night.
That is another perk afforded Cary and Cockrell on Sunday, and one that Cary has availed herself of before.
“The other house concert we played, I slept in the little girl’s room. It was this little pink paradise with doll houses all this stuff. It was the sort of room I always wanted when I was a kid, but didn’t have.”
Once Wood agreed to host the show, he sent out emails to friends and acquaintances, many of them gleaned from his being a frequent concertgoer and, along with Arsenault, a member of the “Twang Gang” that puts on the annual Twangfest music showcase. He also allowed word of the show to be spread via Steve Pick’s “Sound Salvation” and John Wendland’s “Memphis to Manchester” KDHX-FM (88.1) radio shows.
Response was sufficient that he had to stop the RSVPs fairly quickly. Surprisingly, Wood wasn’t daunted by having that many people – some of whom he’d never met – in his home.
“Really, they only heard about this from me, from Thad’s mailing list or from KDHX,” Wood says. “Some of them may be strangers, but they’re kind of from a broader family. They’re not just strangers off the street.”
Like a conversation
In short order, furniture was moved, a p.a. system was borrowed from Wendland, who also fronts the St. Louis band Rough Shop, and the Woods’ two children were accommodated elsewhere for the night. The show began at 8:30 p.m., and it was clear from the moment that the first note was struck that this would be a memorable evening for all concerned.
One thing that made it so was that this was a full band performance, not simply an “unplugged” effort that only involved a few instruments. Alongside Cary’s fiddle and Cockrell’s guitar were bass, drums, and some particularly inspired steel guitar by onetime Human Sexual Response bandmember Rich Gilbert.
As she finished singing “Two Different Things,” one of the tracks from Cary and Cockrell’s new album, “Begonias,” Cary noted, “I was thinking how different it is to be playing a song like that in a room like this. It’s sort of like we’re having a conversation.”
Happily, that was the only conversation going on in the room. The audience offered fervent applause between songs, but was exceedingly polite during the performance. Indeed, the only cell phone that went off during the entire show belonged to Cary.
“Being the host, I was a little bit nervous about attendance and everything,” Wood said during the intermission between sets. “But once the music kicked in, everything was great.
A few hours later, the music had wound down, the party thinned out and the band’s instruments had been packed up.
The next morning, Wood says, he and his wife “sat in our family room around 7:30 a.m., not quite believing how different things were just a few hours before. Thad was the first to wander downstairs around 10 a.m. We had a great time drinking coffee, listening to records, and talking country music while whipping up some breakfast burritos for the rest of the band. They hit the road about noon.”
Ultimately, Wood says, hosting the house concert was a wholly positive experience.
“It was great. No broken bones, no broken dishes. We’re already talking about doing it again sometime.”
Sidebar: What guests said
John Grass
A house concert is considerably different from one in a club. Number one, you can hear every note and every word. It’s just so much more intimate. You feel a real connection to the artist. I appreciate the fact that they’re stopping between every song and telling a story about what’s going on the past few days on the tour.
Jay Swoboda
I think the music lends itself to an intimate feel, but when you’re in someone’s living room, it makes it that much more special.
Lisa Dickmann
[My husband and I] go to smaller clubs a lot, so we’re used to those kinds of shows. I’ve never been to a house concert. I’ve read about them and heard about them, but this is my first one. It’s amazing – the intimate setting, to be so up-close-and-personal. It’s a lot of fun.
House concerts are the ultimate intimate venue -- and sometimes the hosts even kick in meals and lodging
St. Louis Post-Dispatch, July 31, 2005
“I really have to apologize to those who have the rump view,” Caitlin Cary says, addressing a few people seated on a couch behind her. She nods at her microphone, angled cater-corner toward that of her singing and songwriting partner, Thad Cockrell, and adds, “We really have to gaze into each other’s eyes. It’s part of the duets mythos.”
Never mind the rump view. Pretty much everyone gathered to see and hear Cary and Cockrell perform last Sunday night had what amounted to a front-row seat and an all-access backstage pass. But the show didn’t take place at any of the bars or clubs the pair had played on previous trips through town – Cockrell as a solo act and Cary on her own, with her current band, Tres Chicas, or with the now-defunct Ryan Adams star vehicle, Whiskeytown.
This concert took place at a private residence: the Clayton home of Rick and Nancy Wood.
Do it yourself
House concerts are nothing new, of course. There have been recitals performed in front of intimate gatherings pretty much as long as there’s been music. More recent eras have given us house parties, rent parties, and all manner of events involving music, friends and/or family, and more than likely, respectable quantities of beer.
But these days, as the tendency of the music business is to do everything big or not at all, house concerts have become a means for artists to sidestep the industry somewhat and instead embrace the age-old do-it-yourself ethic.
Established artists have been using occasional house concerts to reconnect with members of their audience, who have perhaps tired of seeing their favorite acts in large, impersonal arenas or the same smoky clubs.
For others, who, like Cary and Cockrell, operate at a fairly modest level, house concerts can earn them a few extra dollars, but also help to build an audience, even if it’s only a few dozen people at a time. To be sure, the person who gets to hang out and have a conversation, or even a meal, with the band, is more likely to become a fan of longstanding than if they’d simply gone to a standard-issue show.
House concerts can be especially satisfying experiences for the musicians, too.
“These shows tend to be so much more predictably great than what you’re gonna get when you get thrust into this or that club,” Cary says. “In those situations, you never know what you’re getting.”
Before Sunday night, Cary had played only one house concert.
“The guy had a real sprawling place and rented a tent,” she says. “It looked sort of like a wedding setup. I think there were 200 people there. These things can be big or small.”
At the Woods’ house, the audience numbered about 50, most of whom brought both food and a $10 strictly voluntary donation, all of which went to the band. There were just enough people to fill the room comfortably, as a few souls walked around to sample the potluck supper or check the Cardinals/Cubs game on TV in the front room.
Spread the Word
The show was put together with remarkable speed. Cary and Cockrell are not on the sort of house concert tour that is becoming more common these days, especially among acoustic music troubadours. They were simply trying to fill in a date between scheduled shows in Milwaukee and Nashville.
Roughneck Music promoter and booking agent Marie Arsenault, who once booked Cockrell’s solo shows, got a call from the band on Thursday, asking if she could line up a local venue. When no club date could be secured, Arsenault suggested a house concert.
“I remembered that the last time Thad played here, he played at Frederick’s (Music Lounge),” Arsenault says. “That night, he stayed with Rick’s friend Dave Melson (bassist for St. Louis group Waterloo) and his wife, Angie. Angie is a huge fan, and I thought she might be interested in a house concert. She couldn’t do it, but then Rick said, ‘I’ll do it.’”
“This wasn’t the first time it’s come up,” Wood says. “We always thought, you know, one day we’d like to do something like this. I was a little sheepish (about asking his wife), but she’s always very supportive of whatever I want to do. She said, ‘Sure that’d be great.’”
The couple previously hosted after-concert parties for touring bands, and they’ve invited some of them, including Milton Mapes, Grand Champeen and the Handsome Family, to spend the night.
That is another perk afforded Cary and Cockrell on Sunday, and one that Cary has availed herself of before.
“The other house concert we played, I slept in the little girl’s room. It was this little pink paradise with doll houses all this stuff. It was the sort of room I always wanted when I was a kid, but didn’t have.”
Once Wood agreed to host the show, he sent out emails to friends and acquaintances, many of them gleaned from his being a frequent concertgoer and, along with Arsenault, a member of the “Twang Gang” that puts on the annual Twangfest music showcase. He also allowed word of the show to be spread via Steve Pick’s “Sound Salvation” and John Wendland’s “Memphis to Manchester” KDHX-FM (88.1) radio shows.
Response was sufficient that he had to stop the RSVPs fairly quickly. Surprisingly, Wood wasn’t daunted by having that many people – some of whom he’d never met – in his home.
“Really, they only heard about this from me, from Thad’s mailing list or from KDHX,” Wood says. “Some of them may be strangers, but they’re kind of from a broader family. They’re not just strangers off the street.”
Like a conversation
In short order, furniture was moved, a p.a. system was borrowed from Wendland, who also fronts the St. Louis band Rough Shop, and the Woods’ two children were accommodated elsewhere for the night. The show began at 8:30 p.m., and it was clear from the moment that the first note was struck that this would be a memorable evening for all concerned.
One thing that made it so was that this was a full band performance, not simply an “unplugged” effort that only involved a few instruments. Alongside Cary’s fiddle and Cockrell’s guitar were bass, drums, and some particularly inspired steel guitar by onetime Human Sexual Response bandmember Rich Gilbert.
As she finished singing “Two Different Things,” one of the tracks from Cary and Cockrell’s new album, “Begonias,” Cary noted, “I was thinking how different it is to be playing a song like that in a room like this. It’s sort of like we’re having a conversation.”
Happily, that was the only conversation going on in the room. The audience offered fervent applause between songs, but was exceedingly polite during the performance. Indeed, the only cell phone that went off during the entire show belonged to Cary.
“Being the host, I was a little bit nervous about attendance and everything,” Wood said during the intermission between sets. “But once the music kicked in, everything was great.
A few hours later, the music had wound down, the party thinned out and the band’s instruments had been packed up.
The next morning, Wood says, he and his wife “sat in our family room around 7:30 a.m., not quite believing how different things were just a few hours before. Thad was the first to wander downstairs around 10 a.m. We had a great time drinking coffee, listening to records, and talking country music while whipping up some breakfast burritos for the rest of the band. They hit the road about noon.”
Ultimately, Wood says, hosting the house concert was a wholly positive experience.
“It was great. No broken bones, no broken dishes. We’re already talking about doing it again sometime.”
Sidebar: What guests said
John Grass
A house concert is considerably different from one in a club. Number one, you can hear every note and every word. It’s just so much more intimate. You feel a real connection to the artist. I appreciate the fact that they’re stopping between every song and telling a story about what’s going on the past few days on the tour.
Jay Swoboda
I think the music lends itself to an intimate feel, but when you’re in someone’s living room, it makes it that much more special.
Lisa Dickmann
[My husband and I] go to smaller clubs a lot, so we’re used to those kinds of shows. I’ve never been to a house concert. I’ve read about them and heard about them, but this is my first one. It’s amazing – the intimate setting, to be so up-close-and-personal. It’s a lot of fun.