From: owner-believers-digest@smoe.org (believers-digest) To: believers-digest@smoe.org Subject: believers-digest V5 #112 Reply-To: believers@smoe.org Sender: owner-believers-digest@smoe.org Errors-To: owner-believers-digest@smoe.org Precedence: bulk believers-digest Monday, June 25 2001 Volume 05 : Number 112 In Today's believer's digest: ----------------- re: May I Suggest ["Earl T. Higgins" ] LA Times Article on House Concerts (long) ["ronsopas@earthlink.net" Subject: re: May I Suggest Cheryl wrote: > From: MAUMUS@aol.com > Subject: re: May I Suggest > > ... how 'bout another round of tape trees? > Cheryl I second that! My CD burner is ready. The first CD tree was awesome, I listen to it all the time. Also, a very belated thanks to Gail J. Cohen for the cool cover! It really impresses people, including me! Earl HELP! owner-believers@smoe.org Send mail to believers@smoe.org Susan's CD's are available on your desktop at World Cafe CDs http://worldcafecds.com ------------------------------ Date: Sun, 24 Jun 2001 13:16:09 -0400 From: "ronsopas@earthlink.net" Subject: LA Times Article on House Concerts (long) Last Sunday, I attended a house concert of Suzanne Buirgy in LA, out by the airport. As I got out of my car, I was approached by a reporter who assumed I was a neighbor and asked how I liked hearing music blaring from Scott Duncan's house. I explained that I was not a neighbor, had come to hear the show, and that I was sure that, since this was accoustic folk music, it never "blared." Anyway, I spoke extensively with this young reporter who seemed intent on interviewing everyone, and exploring every nook and cranny of the house. She said, "I really want to look around and get the lay of things." This seemed rather odd to me, since it was not a big house. Then she misquotes me as wanting to "nose around." Anyway, the article actually was printed and I was quoted. The article also talks about McCabes a lot, which is Susan's regular venue in LA. Anyway, here's the article, in all its glory. BTW, Suzie T is the "friend in Michigan" who told me about it. To see the article directly, the link is: http://www.latimes.com/communities/news/south_bay/20010622/tws0002113.html WESTCHESTER--While Martha Stewart may give advice on nearly every avenue of domesticity, she may not be your resource for finding fresh and sensible tips on turning your family room into a concert venue. You'd do better to enlist the help of 48-year-old Westchester resident Scott Duncan. "All you need is a home big enough to bring in 30 of your friends," said Duncan, who works at an aerospace company when he and girlfriend Rosemary Wilde are not hosting the monthly Duncan House Concert series in his four-bedroom home or leading house concert workshops at folk festivals. "And I've got a huge living room." Duncan pays his 15-year-old son, Brian, $10 to set the floral print couch out on the front porch, post a few "no smoking" signs and get 55 or so folding chairs into his living room, transforming the sleepy two-story house on a cul-de-sac into a makeshift folk concert hall. Typically, the shows do not turn a profit--the $12 to $15 collected at the door goes to the performers and Duncan pays for the refreshments, advertising and "help" out of his own pocket. But he doesn't seem to mind. "This gives me a chance to give back to the community and be supportive of the arts," he said. "It helps that [I] really have a passion for the music." Many living rooms and backyards throughout North America have doubled as sites for intimate acoustic affairs -- a holdover from parlor days before the age of television and the '60s when artists would play at homes and record shops to audiences seated on overstuffed beanbags. This grass-roots phenomenon has a strong showing on the East Coast and in Texas, corresponding to regions with a broad folk music base. Acoustic folk house concerts generally have only a small showing in a handful of Westside music lovers' homes, usually as part of a series of performances or one-night shows, which fans are kept abreast of via e-mail and word of mouth. "I've had some incredible performances," Duncan said. After five years of hosting shows, the list of acts that have stood upon the hardwood floor in the front of the room Duncan also uses as a dining room, mindful not to crash their guitars into his chandelier, may not read like a season at the Hollywood Bowl, but it is impressive for a living room. Folk singer-songwriter Vance Gilbert has done a show at Duncan's home. So have The Kennedys who performed with folk icon Nancy Griffith and Cliff Eberhardt, who's playing at McCabe's Guitar Shop in Santa Monica this Sunday. "McCabe's and me are the only venues," Duncan said. "If McCabe's is booked that weekend, then they call me." McCabe's, known for its "hot finger pickers and real fancy guitar playing" according to employee Denny Croy, can support three times the audience compared to Duncan's homespun venue. "We're not a house concert," Croy said. "I know that people just basically clear their living room out a little bit and get some folding chairs. It's very intimate." For its part, the Pico Boulevard guitar shop, which has been around since 1969, clears out guitars and equipment for their concerts. "I think what artists like to look for is a range of venues, the bigger venues or something more intimate," said Anjali Raval, a spokeswoman for the House of Blues in West Hollywood. House concerts, she said, let artists test new material and get immediate feedback from audiences. "But I can't imagine Lucinda Williams playing at a house concert." But some professional and developing musicians will. Last Sunday, as the shadow of an unattended basketball hoop grew long into an empty street, a powerful alto and a smoldering acoustic guitar could be heard coming from the Duncan home. Inside, 1999 Kerrville New Folk Award winner Suzanne Buirgy was rocking the house. "This show is probably the loudest because Suzanne definitely has a set of lungs on her," Duncan said. He added that the noise and a few extra cars on his street have never appeared to be a problem for his neighbors. "They've even been to my concerts before," he said. Duncan's neighbor, Carole Wilcox, who did not attend last weekend's performance, but could catch snippets of Buirgy's ballads and audience applause from across the street. "He's been hosting them for years," she said. "I think they sound pretty good." And as long as none of the neighbors take issue with Duncan's concerts, they can continue. "If the neighbors agree then technically you don't have a problem. We wouldn't normally show up unless we had a complaining party," said Sgt. Vance Bjorklund of the LAPD Noise Enforcement Team, a group of officers who oversee chronic noise complaints citywide. There are no grievances on record with his department against Duncan and his concerts. "And if nobody complains, hey, party on!" Bjorklund said. Buirgy's performance was Long Beach-resident Michelle Sernaker's first house concert. She admits she had some reservations about going to a private home to listen to a concert. "I thought, well, this sounds weird, but I want to hear Suzanne sing, so I showed up," she said. For some, being surrounded by the personal effects of strangers is more interesting than the drab settings of a club or stadium. "I didn't come to see about how the people live, I just came for the music," said 52-year-old Ron Rosen from South Pasadena. "But it is kinda fun to watch and nose around." Rosen has attended house concerts in Brentwood, Burbank and Pasadena, and was alerted to Duncan's by a friend in Michigan. In fact, as the national network of house concert providers links up with more fans on the Web, more curious fans will be able to see music performed in domestic environs. "I truly believe that this is still on its way up," Duncan said. "The amount of house concerts that I've seen over the past three years has increased. And as performers out there gain popularity, they're going to need some place to play." FYI: Learn more about the Duncan House Concert series at http://people.we.mediaone.net/scottd012/ or call (310) 410-4642. To find other house concerts or to learn how to host your own, visit http://www.houseconcerts.com. - -------------------------------------------------------------------- Mail2Web - Check your email from the web at http://www.mail2web.com/ . HELP! owner-believers@smoe.org Send mail to believers@smoe.org Susan's CD's are available on your desktop at World Cafe CDs http://worldcafecds.com ------------------------------ End of believers-digest V5 #112 ******************************* --------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- -------------------------- This has been a posting from the Susan Werner believers-digest To unsubscribe send mail to Majordomo@smoe.org with "unsubscribe believers-digest" in the body of the message