Change of venue

Cars line one side of the darkened street leading to a packed parking lot as two drivers circle like sharks for the last space. Live music spills out of a dimly lit doorway and into the dark Friday night every time a new couple enters or someone steps out for a phone call or a smoke.

It is opening night of Baton Rouge’s newest club, and as far as anyone can guess, the joint is open for one night only. There are no marquees, neon signs or bouncers in sight. Alcohol is BYOB, and the ticket price is a suggested donation tucked into a shoebox.

That show was last fall, and that club was Leigh Potts’ townhouse off Brightside Lane. On the bill were a group of friends and musicians who typically play venues like Chelsea’s Café and North Gate Tavern but, like other artists in the city, are gravitating toward house shows with more regularity.

“We had great attendance for my small living space,” Potts says. “People came and went as they pleased, and you could tell they were really enjoying themselves. There were a lot of jokes throughout the night between the performing artists and those in attendance. It had a good homey feel.”

Singer and songwriter Luke Ash approached his friend Potts last September about hosting a concert at her home. Potts says playing hostess was easy on her; the 22-year-old student and counselor simply opened her doors and provided soft drinks and chips. Ash handled the promotion and the line-up and reimbursed her for the snacks with her cut from the shoebox at the end of the night. Patrons willingly paid between $5 and $15 for the show. Some paid more just to support their friends.

“House shows are a more personal environment, and the artists often feel more comfortable cutting loose a little more,” Potts says. “The atmosphere was pretty exciting and comfortable all at the same time.”

While house shows are typically informal, they can also take some getting used to. Jared and Sarah Hornsby have hosted several concerts inside their Baton Rouge home, and some first-timers there are not used to the immediacy of the environment.

“As the show progresses, though, people start to inch their way from the back rows to the front,” Jared Hornsby says. “By the end of the evening, the front rows have filled, and feet are tapping. For people that love music, this is one of the best ways to see it.”

The house show movement is less about any novel ideas and more about a new generation discovering them. It is a mini-trend, not a revolution, because it is not about rebelling. And it’s not going to put clubs and bars on the skids—even the ABC board couldn’t do that, no matter how hard it tried—but it is about realization and maybe a smidgen of empowerment. Mostly, it is a matter of intimacy. And it is a template that travels well.

Delta soul songstress Kristin Diable booked an entire tour made up of house shows a few years ago. Now based in New Orleans, the Baton Rouge native asks fans to e-mail her if they are interested in hosting a house show.

“Music is, after all, about connection and feeling,” Diable says. “What better way to let the music connect than in the company of friends, in the comfort of a real home?”

In a modern music industry where the “blockbuster” young bands that grace magazine covers are lucky to move 100,000 units of a given album—the incessantly praised Bitte Orca from media darlings The Dirty Projectors has only sold roughly 40,000—the profit motive for many young musicians has largely vanished. So if the point is to have fun and connect with friends new and old rather than make money, why not do that at a friend’s house?

Shay Youngblood, a local musician and founder of the late retro rock band Hollywood Blues, says the fact that bands can control the financial aspects of a house show is one of its key assets. Hollywood Blues played them often.

“The downside to clubs is all the scummy promoter, sound guy and door guy dramas that can happen,” Youngblood says. “Getting ripped off, money and ego traumas. But even house shows have their difficulties in this area, and they are often poorly organized.”

Cohen Hartman, who fronts Baton Rouge’s Cohen & The Ghost, believes house shows are great for new or lesser-known artists, and even though they offer one-of-a-kind experiences—his drummer once punched the arm of the couch on a wood floor to make a kick drum sound—these attendance-limiting spaces make promoting the shows difficult. Few hosts want too many people there, and no one wants the police pulling the plug.

“The appeal would definitely be the energy when there’s a full crowd,” Hartman says. “When people are closed in, it makes a warmer environment, literally and figuratively.”

Elliot Adams is the new Digital Media Director for LED and a deejay. Last year he moved to Baton Rouge from Portland, where he was heavily involved in the house show movement as a performer and a concert host.

“I don’t think it’s something that’s easy to find in a bar or club,” Adams says. “The focus of the evening is purely music, which makes for an incredibly engaged audience, something bands—touring bands, especially—are desperate to find.”

House shows let music fans watch closely as artists exchange a self-consciously programmed performance for a more playful and confessional set, and then share a drink and an audible conversation with them afterward. Plus, there’s always the chance of catching underground artists before they burst into bloom. Adams and his Portland housemates once spent a rain-soaked evening in 1999 hosting an unknown band from Nebraska on its first tour through the Pacific Northwest.

“The band was Bright Eyes,” Adams says of the now-famous Conor Oberst-fronted indie rock group. “And they blew all twelve of us away.”