House concert

[Tadpui]

In a perfect storm of stress and activity, 2 different things happened today that were months in the making. I finally crossed the finish line on a brutal month of work-related stuff, and Grammy-nominated singer/songwriter Ari Hest played a concert at my house.

My wife has been a fan of Ari's for many years now, and he actually played at our wedding. She worked it out to have him come and play a show for some friends and family in our living room, and today was the day.

Even though it was a small crowd of less than 20 people, I knew that our living room was reverberant enough that the ambient clatter of several people in that room would be enough to require a little bit of sound reinforcement. Mind you, I have almost ZERO experience in live sound. So I've been stressing over it.

I pulled a few long-lost items out of my closet and (literally) dusted them off and gave it a go for a live sound setup. Get a load of this hodge-podge of ancient and outdated equipment (plus some stuff I actually use regularly):

- Shure SM57 for a vocal mic
- FMR RNP as both a preamp for vocals, also acting as a DI for his acoustic guitar
- FMR RNC for a tiny bit of vocal compression
- FMR RNLA for a tiny bit of acoustic guitar compression
- Yamaha MG 10/2 mixer to sum everything down to a single stereo signal
- mono line output from the mixer into (get this) the mono line input of an ancient Trace Acoustic amp

Other than a few issues with clipping somewhere in the signal chain on the first song, this frankenstein setup actually worked, and sounded pretty good! Seriously, I haven't touched that amp in over 15 years, and that mixer hasn't been out of its box in at least 8 years. It's a wonder that they still work, much less helped entertain several of our friends, family, and a couple of his fans that my wife met at his most recent show in Denver.

Sorry, I didn't record any of it. Not only were my experiments with pulling a stereo bus off of the board unimpressive, but I didn't want to get into any weirdness with copyright stuff. Anyways, here are a few pics of the event and the setup:

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[Greg_L]

WTF how did you get this guy to just come to your house?

[Tadpui]

WTF how did you get this guy to just come to your house?

haha yeah, it's kind of random. But apparently he does these house concerts every once in a while. My wife just hit him up on Facebook and asked if he'd be interested. We paid him to come, and we asked our guests to donate towards the cost. We even provided snacks and drinks

[Greg_L]

haha yeah, it's kind of random. But apparently he does these house concerts every once in a while. My wife just hit him up on Facebook and asked if he'd be interested. We paid him to come, and we asked our guests to donate towards the cost. We even provided snacks and drinks

Haha awesome! Well done. Looks like a cozy private concert.

[Minerman]

Did you wear pinkie rings like Greg's buddy at his recent gig to get this guy to show up???

Sorry dude, just kidding...

My neighbors do that about every time I fire up one of my amps, seems they're always looking out the window with a drink in their hand shaking their head...

[rayc]

There's quite a market and circuit for living room gigs. There's an Aussie former rockstar doing living rooms in Europe at present - she did a bundle in Oz before setting off. Janis Ian does them when they suit her schedule.

[JD01]

That's great - I'm gonna invite Greg Graffin over to play to me while I cook pancakes .

[vomitHatSteve]

There's a book called something like "how I made $50,000 from a six month house concert tour, and you can too" that explains the ins and outs of the circuit pretty well.

[Tadpui]

Apparently there's even a booking agency here in the Denver area that books local artist at home shows. That might be cool to look into someday, but I would imagine that there are only a couple of local artists that I'd even be interested in listening to, much less having in our home.

It was a nice experience, although I can't say that I'm looking forward to doing it again any time soon. My wife already asked some other touring duo to play here (without my consultation) so we'll see about that...

[Greg_L]

That's great - I'm gonna invite Greg Graffin over to play to me while I cook pancakes .

Lol. That'd be cool. I'd do the opposite. I'd invite the rest of the band and leave him at home.

[JD01]

That's great - I'm gonna invite Greg Graffin over to play to me while I cook pancakes .

Lol. That'd be cool. I'd do the opposite. I'd invite the rest of the band and leave him at home.

Great... he'd probably have nothing better to do then.