Evansville Courier & Press ©2002

(Evanville, IN)

Home concerts bring live music into living rooms

By ROGER McBAIN Courier & Press staff writer 464-7520 or rmcbain@evansville.net

May 12, 2002

Music has filled Tim Piazza and Beth Reasoner's log house countless times before, but never like this.

This night, instead of jamming with friends, singing and making music on the eclectic collection of acoustic instruments that line the walls of the couple's West Side cabin, Piazza and Reasoner are here to listen. They sit with a score of others, watching intently from wooden chairs and overstuffed sofas assembled in the open-beamed living room.

Before them, sitting in a worn wooden chair, Rod MacDonald, a veteran singer/songwriter and recording artist from South Florida, strums a scarred Martin acoustic guitar and sings. It's a nostalgic lament for a forlorn motel operator left behind by time and the interstate that passed him by, reducing his clientele to lost travelers on a "highway to nowhere."

Audience empathy twists into smiles and then erupts into laughter, however, when the lyrics get around to revealing just who MacDonald is crooning about: Norman Bates, the cross-dressing, knife-wielding killer who ruins Janet Leigh's shower curtain in Alfred Hitchcock's thriller "Psycho."

Applause follows, then MacDonald is onto the next song, a sweet reminiscence about growing "Back in the Country" in rural Vermont. They're among a score of original songs MacDonald will present in his intimate 2-hour performance. Tonight's gathering is his Evansville debut, a showcase performance for MacDonald, who's been playing bars, coffeehouses, folk festivals and concert stages in the United States and abroad for nearly three decades. The venue makes it different from all those other performances, however. This is a house concert. The event, presented in March, is billed as the first in a series of Concerts at the Cabin house concerts Piazza and Reasoner plan to bring to their West Side Evansville home. So just what is a house concert?

It's a kind of musical house party in which invited friends contribute - Piazza suggested $10 for MacDonald's visit - to compensate the artist. He earns more money by selling cassettes and CD recordings during a break and after the concert. Checking through the Internet or other folk or acoustic music networks, hosts line up the artist and provide the "hall," refreshments and the chance for guests to meet the performer in the intimate setting. It's common for hosts (as did Piazza and Reasoner) to provide the night's lodging and the next morning's breakfast. The house concert draws on time-honored traditions, from European chamber music performances to frontier concerts and dances in which neighbors gathered in a home to enjoy traveling fiddlers and square-dance callers. It's a relatively recent development on the contemporary acoustic music scene, however.

MacDonald, who's played house concerts throughout in the United States as well as in Europe and Australia, first heard about them in the early 1990s in an around San Francisco, he said.

The growth of the Internet and the creation of Web sites devoted to folk music, acoustic music and, specifically, house concerts, have helped spread the word. An Internet search today will turn up hundreds of house concerts all over the nation.

A search of Indiana events turns up two Indianapolis hosts, as well as a Terre Haute woman who's been putting on house concerts since December 1996.

Paul and Miriam Ash, co-owners of the weekly Ferdinand News, have been presenting house concerts in their Ferdinand, Ind., home for a couple of years. Paul Ash is an award-winning singer/songwriter who's played at festivals around the country, and is "working on my third, fourth and fifth CDs," he said. The Ashes had musical gatherings in their home for years before they started presenting guest artists in house concerts. Ash is convinced home is the best place to listen to live, original music. "You can hear the best music in the world in houses," he said. "The best political commentary, the best humor, the best love songs."

House concerts are as appealing for artists as for audiences, says Paul Ash. For the musician, "you get fed, a bed and you get to play in a smoke-free environment." And when you take into account the free food and accommodations and the contributions and recording sales, a house concert can end up paying more than a commercial gig, says Ash. With big enough attendance, "you can walk away with two, three or even four times what you'd get in a standard venue."

MacDonald concurred. "Probably the lowest-paying gig for me on this tour will be the biggest club I play." He appreciates singing without inhaling secondhand smoke, and likes the fact he doesn't need to play over clinking ice cubes and background chatter in house concerts. And home concert audiences tend to be more attentive to lyrics, he added. "The content, I think is a big factor."

Their proximity to major routes between Cincinnati, St. Louis, Chicago and Nashville, Tenn., and Louisville, Ky., make Evansville and Ferdinand good house concert prospects for musicians traveling between larger municipal areas, say Ash and Piazza.

Location was what brought him to Evansville, noted MacDonald, who connected with Piazza on the Internet.

He'd played in Atlanta the day before, and was scheduled to play in in Rockford, Ill., the next night. Evansville made a convenient and profitable stopover for him en route to the Rockford engagement.

Landing MacDonald for his first home concert was a special treat for Piazza. He'd become a fan years before, when he'd heard the singer/songwriter perform in Boston, he said.

"I never guessed that 12, 13 years later he'd be playing in my living room."

Tim Piazza and Beth Reasoner's Concerts at the Cabin series of home concerts will continue May 31 with a performance by singer/songwriter Raymond Yates. They plan to present Alan Rhody in July. To reserve a seat or for more information, call them at 421-8662, send e-mail to greenleaf54@hotmail.com or visit their Web site at www.indianafolk.com on the Internet.

Paul and Miriam Ash will bring Darryl Purpose to their home outside Ferdinand, Ind., for a house concert on Aug. 10. For more information, call them at (812) 367-2827 or send them e-mail at flash@psci.net via e-mail.

For information about other house concerts in Indiana and the rest of the country, go to www.houseconcerts.com on the Internet.