House Concert with Pat Wictor and Iain Campbell Smith

I attended my first house concert on Saturday at the Song Box. It seemed a bit confusing at first. House concerts are supposed to be just as it sounds: a concert in someone's home, but "Song Box" sounded like a regular venue.

I first learned about house concerts on the late Dave Ray's web site. (It was only looking for his site again that I discovered that Dave Ray had died in November 28th, 2002. A radio interview with Koerner, Ray and Glover and an appreciation by Phil Heywood are available on line.) I was taken with Ray's practical instructions for arranging a house concert. He covered everything from the size of the room, types of chairs, what the performer needed (I recall that Dave wanted a piece of plywood to amplify his stomping), where to put food, etc.)

The concert was announced at the Cliff Eberhardt concert in the Our Times Coffeehouse, at the Ethical Culture Society in Garden City. There was something almost furtive about the announcement - you had to call or send E-mail to get directions. I imagined that admission would require a secret knock on a door. (The web being a wonderful thing actually had an address listed, but I didn't think to look until later.) We were asked to bring something for a pot luck meal. I toyed with the idea of bringing a goat's head (appropriate for any number of satanic rites), but brought Chinese steamed buns instead.

As it turned out, the family room in the basement of the house had a raised platform at one end, great acoustics, and a sound board. When everyone but me sang along with Pat Wictor's first song I knew I was not among my peers. I guess half the people in the audience (about 3 dozen people) were singer-songwriters themselves.

The original idea was for the evening to be divided into two performances, Pat Wictor and Ian Campell Smith, an Australian folksinger/diplomat (there's a story there), but the two decided to perform together with a drummer.

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