HOUSE PARTY

Wouldn't it be great, as the beer commercials say, to have a concert right at your house? And wouldn't it be great if the performer spent the night right here with your family and petted your dog, and if your friends showed up and actually paid admission?

That very scenario is happening all over Texas, with folk-based performers and their fans who have found that harmony begins at home. The movement is simply called "house concerts."

House concerts, by definition, are informal. They're usually once a month, always in someone's residence, feature mostly solo entertainers with no amplification, charge a per-head price that goes directly to the artist, and draw a crowd mostly by word of mouth.

High technology does play a role sometimes, however.

One of the active house-concert hosts in the Fort Worth-Dallas area is Joe Jones, a computer programmer for Bank One. He and Debbie Masterson have a concert in their Dallas home once a month, and even house-shopped with a concert venue in mind: a spacious den with a fireplace.

"It's a patron-of-the-arts kind of thing," said Jones, a Fort Worth native. "My motivation is, I don't have to drive across town to go into a smoky bar. For maybe $50, I get a concert in my living room."

Jones figures he pays that much out of pocket to promote his shows via mailouts and phone calls, plus he and Masterson put out a main dish to complement the covered dishes that others bring for refreshment. Those who don't bring food usually contribute monetarily, and everyone pays a $6 charge that goes to the artist.

House concerts are the perfect answer, said performer Rex Foster of Comfort, for artists who "don't do well in bars" and aren't yet on the headlining level for a major listening room or coffee-house. "And you don't have to mess with lights and sound."

The entertainers at house concerts aren't amateurs, Foster added. Most are veterans of the Kerrville Folk Festival, and are already successful songwriters.

It's a good deal for the performers. They're able to add a moneymaking show on their schedules en route to other gigs or other house concerts, as well as have a place to stay without expenses.

A recent house concert that Jones organized drew 10 people and collected $120 for the performer from admission charges and tape sales. Another recent performer got $300 to $350 when 30 people showed up.

Jones added that the artists make at least half their pay for the evening just like the big arena guys do: selling tapes and CDs in the foyer.

Jones and Masterson's latest show was Sunday, featuring Barbara Kessler of Massachusetts, a New Folk award-winner at this year's Kerrville Folk Festival. She stayed with Jones and Masterson for a week, doing house concerts and other venues in the area. Jones found her via a note on the Internet, saying she was looking for house concerts. It was accompanied by a seven-page bio on one of the folk music forums.

Jones went to his first house concert about two years ago at the home of a friend in Wylie. "I hadn't heard of one before," he said.

Things progressed, and by June of this year, Jones found himself sitting in on a meeting at the Kerrville Folk Festival for those interested in house concerts. Thirty-five people attended, including four from this area who have gone on to host their own concerts.

It hasn't been hard at all," Jones said of his foray into staging his own concerts. He merely carries around business cards and a schedule of his concerts, hands them out to interested music fans and performers at house concerts and coffeehouses, and has started to maintain a site on line.

"Our best showing was 32 people, five months ago for Michael McNevin," Jones said. "I was up until 5 a.m. playing guitar with him that day."

McNevin, a California-based singer-songwriter in the soulful folk tradition, plays frequent opening gigs at Caravan of Dreams as well as dates at area coffeehouses.

Every house-concert host arranges things differently, Jones said, adding that most fledgling concert-givers are concerned about space. Jones can get 35 to 40 people into his 18-by-20-foot den, once he removes the furniture and replaces it with $4.99 plastic lawn chairs bought specifically for the concerts.

Jones stages his concerts on Sunday afternoons, so as not to conflict with club dates or other house concerts, but ran into a little trouble with the Dallas Cowboys game against Kessler. Only about 10 people came to the show.

Foster, a longtime acoustic-folk artist, performs between 10 and 15 house concerts a year, in addition to playing the state's major "listening rooms" like Poor David's Pub in Dallas, Anderson Fair in Houston and the Cactus Cafe in Austin.

"I got in on the beginning of when it started catching on, six or seven years maybe," Foster said of the house-concert trend in Texas, adding that there are probably pockets of house concerts all over the country. One of the first house concert operations in Texas, he added, was Urban Campfires in San Antonio.

The couple who originated that series were veterans of the Kerrville Folk Festival "and loved that whole campfire music thing," Foster said. The first ones, Foster said, drew 20 to 30 people, and rapidly spread to an average of 50 and sometimes up to 70 people.

Jones said the biggest house concerts in Texas are those of Rouse House in Austin, which now takes reservations and tries to limit show to 75 attendees. Bruce Rouse has access to virtually any Texas acoustic musician, and often books for two straight days, Jones said. A recent Chuck Pyle stand netted 100 people on a Saturday and 70 on Sunday.

"They've almost become like little appreciation societies," Foster said of house concerts. "One of the things I like about them is there's no barriers between me and those who come to hear what I've done. There's an intense audience-music synthesis going on. . . .

"There are no enhancements; it's raw," he added. "If you're not good in the kitchen, then you'd best not do a house concert."