Steve and Lobelia House Concert tour 2011

Plans are now underway for us to return to the US this May/June and play some house concerts. We had such a great time last year on our visit, and we’ve already talked to many of our hosts from last year about return visits.

This week is when we start putting in dates and routing our trip – we’ll be flying into and out of New York, in at the beginning of May, out at the end of June/beginning of July. Aside from time with family and friends, what happens in between is largely reliant on people booking us for house concerts.

What’s a house concert?

The clue’s in the name – a concert in someone’s house. It’s taking music into a more comfortable, intimate listening environment, it often involves food too, and can be for an audience of anywhere from about 15-50 people, depending on your number of musically adventurous friends and how much they’re willing to donate to the cause of us getting to where you are.

We bring everything that’s needed for music, you just provide a willing, listening audience. The show can be advertised beyond your immediate friends and family, but we promise we’ll never give out your address to anyone or put it on the internet, and will allow you to vet anyone else who wants to come along.

Money: on a trip like this, with car rental, gas and a baby to look after, we need to be aiming for around $400 a show. If that sounds like a lot, it’s less daunting when you realise that it can include ticket donations, music sales (CDs and USB sticks full of music) as well as any extra fun we put on, like music masterclasses/workshops etc. beforehand. Sometimes people underwrite the show themselves so they can put on an amazing event for their friends/family/colleagues… we’re open to that kind of arts patronage too. If you know of a baby-friendly amazing venue near you that you have a good contact with, we’re interested in that too.

Accomodation – more often than not we stay in the house we’re playing in. Sometimes that doesn’t work out, and that’s fine, we can either find friends to stay with, or use some ninja internet skillz to find a cheap hotel.

What now? First up, if this takes your fancy, register an interest either in the comments here, on Facebook or Twitter, or by emailing. Please let us know

• where you are,
• what level of help you’re offering (from venue suggestion to fully guaranteed show)
• and any dates that really DON’T work for you between the first week of may and the first week of July.

From there, we start planning. We’ve currently got 19 (NINETEEN!!) show offers already being explored. Not all of those will happen, but to have that much interest before we even start the process is fabulous.

If you’ve hosted a house concert before with us, and want to say nice things about it in the comments below, please feel free.

Here are a couple of videos that show what we do, in case you’re wondering 🙂