The most common question we get is, "How in the world did you guys get into this?" My usual reponse is that I did way too many drugs in the 60's (it's a joke...i was born in '68).
But seriously folks, we truly accidentally fell into this. The very first show we hosted was as a favor to a friend of a friend. Dave Insley was coming through town and had a gig on a Monday night. BTW that's a VERY bad night to be playing in this town. So we decided to host a combination house concert and Super Bowl party. No PA. No chairs. Lots of beer though. At the end of Dave's show, we passed the hat then watched the Super Bowl. And thought, hey this is kind of cool.
Our next show was a little more planned. Susan and I have have been fans of a band out of Nashville called The Floating Men for a long time. We have been co-executive producers on several of their records over the last few years. As one of the perks for being an executive producer, the band offered to do a house concert for each of the producers. Also being huge fans of Jeff Black, we invited Jeff Black to join Jeff Holmes for a show in our backyard. I booked them a show at the HiTone in Memphis that weekend too. And thought, we were right this is cool!!
A couple of months passed and we started thinking about doing this on a regular basis...4 or 5 times a year maximum (yeah right!!) We noticed that acts we loved weren't pulling very well at the venues they were playing. Big name acts and Grammy nominees were only pulling 10-30 people at $5-10 each. Damn it!! I've got more friends than that who will pay more to listen to a show that starts earlier and where people aren't talking and smoking.
So, one night we were at a show with Peter Bradley Adams (eastmountainsouth) and Brian Vander Ark (The Verve Pipe). Eight people were there. I was livid. Finally after enough social lubrication, we approached Peter.
"Peter, we are thinking about starting a house concert series because we think we can get more people in our living room than this place."
Peter replies, "That's a great idea. I'm moving from LA to Nashville. How does December 6th sound?"
And that quickly we became the dog that caught the car.
Ask and you shall receive but be damn careful about what you ask for!!!
