Is there a star in the house?

       ROB ADAMS

November 24 2005

When Charlie McCusker agreed to turn his front room in Bridge of Weir into an auditorium for the evening, little did he think that he would be providing a broadcasting facility, too. But the results of that experiment, where American singer-songwriter Darden Smith entertained a couple of dozen of McCusker's pals, are about to be relayed to the nation on BBC Radio Scotland's Brand New Country programme.

House concerts like this one have been popular in the US since the mid-1990s and the idea is beginning to catch on both here and in Europe, although there's obviously a similar tradition going back to bardic times in Scotland and Radio nan Gaidheal has a long history of broadcasting house concerts.

The trend began for a variety of reasons. There's the novelty appeal of seeing a favourite performer up close and personal – researching this article turned up examples of audience members travelling from as far as Japan to share this "collectors' item" experience – and some towns miss out on tours because of the distances involved or lack of venues, leading to fans resorting to DIY gigs.

For musicians, too, the intimacy can certainly be an attraction. There are, though, pragmatic considerations. Thirty people paying the equivalent of, say, £10 is not a bad night's work for some. Leading American singer-songwriters Eliza Gilkyson and Eric Taylor, both regular visitors to these shores, have found house concerts a big help in their careers.

"Booking them on off nights, which are usually Sunday through to Wednesday in the States, can make a difference in whether a tour can stay out on the road or not," says Gilkyson. "If you're not working and you're away from home, then you're sitting in a hotel room – or two rooms, in my case – which costs money. House concerts carried me for several years through the tough times when I couldn't get enough shows to fill a week." Gilkyson's experiences are generally good, although being the house guest as well as the star turn can be exhausting.

"Performing is theatre and you need to step into character or else you have to work a lot harder," she says. "To go from standing in the kitchen eating snacks with everyone to playing for them isn't natural. I prefer some separation and my favourite house concerts are the ones that have sound and lights and some staging as well as a dressing room, which can be a bedroom or something, just somewhere where I can be private before going on."

The sound and lights at Charlie McCusker's initiation into house concert promotion were modest and the recording equipment was the sort, says Rab Noakes of Neon Productions, which produces Brand New Country, that can be carried in a rucksack. Noakes, a singer-songwriter of long experience himself, sounds wistful in describing the set-up for Darden Smith's broadcast.

"There are health and safety issues to consider because you're in someone's house rather than a professional studio, but you get a great broadcasting experience," he says. "It's warts and all and you get a real sense of that whole thing of radio being a way of speaking to 100,000 people one at a time through the intimacy of the performance. I'd love to do some of these concerts myself because that closeness with the audience for a solo performer is just so appealing. It would be great if we could build up a circuit over here like they have in the States."

He may be about to get his wish. One of Eric Taylor's most recent experiences of house concerts was in Holland where the hosts had recently got married and had danced their first dance at their wedding to Taylor's Dean Moriarty. When Taylor sang the song this time, the couple grabbed each other's hands and danced down the hallway. Another couple, who had travelled from Northern Ireland, got so into the idea that they invited Taylor to play a concert in their house, and other guests were queuing up to try to arrange their own concerts with Taylor.

Preston Reed, the American guitar wizard who now plies his trade globally from Girvan in Ayrshire, can't top Taylor's dancing story but he has had some notable successes, such as selling $1000 (£580) worth of CDs after one performance.

"I played one concert in California where I had to move outside and play in the garden because so many people turned up, which kind of defeats the house-concert notion, I suppose," he says. "But the way things are going in the US, where musicians have to pay to play on some stages, house concerts are a great way forward. They're still professional – and professionaly run – gigs; the informality doesn't descend into a free-for-all. And intimacy definitely sells the music. Often the audience will be completely new to your music. It's almost all done by word of mouth – although some of the bigger ones advertise on the internet now – and the people who come generally turn up because they trust the host's taste in music."

Indeed, Charlie McCusker had never heard of Darden Smith before he agreed to host the concert, although he – like the Bridge of Weir audience – has a fair collection of Smith CDs now. McCusker, a lawyer, is a regular at Brookfield Village Hall in Renfrewshire where journalist and music evangelist Loudon Temple promotes monthly concerts.

It was Temple who persuaded him to go ahead with the Darden Smith gig and there are, says Temple, more artists lined up to tour Scotland in 2006, including singer-songwriter Mark Erelli, American traditionalists Beverly Smith & Carl Jones and Ginny Hawker & Tracy Schwarz, and guitar maker to the stars, Wayne Henderson, all of whom play house concerts regularly in the States.

There's no shortage of willing hosts here either. When Neon Productions asked for potential venues for further house concert broadcasts, they were inundated with "you provide the musicians, we'll provide the audience and the beer" offers.

The last word goes to Eliza Gilkyson, whose performing style is well-known for shrinking the largest venue into an intimate space but who sees house concerts as an important part of the music industry.
"It's easier to get press and radio coverage when you play a bona fide venue, of course," she says. "But I'm profoundly grateful for the ways house concerts sustained me when I was trying to create new markets and had little support from standard venues. They may be the single most helpful way that new music will come up through the streets to the stages without big label promotion. They're a win-win situation."

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