House Shows

What is a house show? you ask. Well, let us explain…

We realized after some time on the road with different bands that it can be hard to really converse around ideas when the conversation’s a one-way street. Most venues are set up to be one-way streets…where performers or speakers are given a microphone and expected to articulate their art/truth/whatever to the audience.

We don’t buy into that. We hope/long/dream of a way of communicating our ideas in such a way where you and your community of friends can interact with them, chew on them, spit them out or digest them whole (hopefully not the last one).

You invite us into your home…along with a couple dozen of your friends and neighbors. We play an hour or so, with conversational breaks and song setups in here and there. It’s a great way to introduce people to conversations that might otherwise seem “taboo”…politics and faith, nonviolence, holistic approaches to life, the Kingdom of God.

Our most inspiring concerts have been in people’s homes (plugged-in or unplugged), enjoying a local microbrew or fine wine, sharing our hopes and dreams for our world and trying to figure out what the hell to do next.

Some backstory

In fall of 2005, we moved out of our apartment in Oceanside, CA. We sold, gave away, and packed our earthly stuff into storage. We knew very little, only that our season in Southern California felt “over” and we were looking ahead. What was ahead? You ask. We didn’t know. (Some would suggest that we still don’t.)

We only knew that there were several folks across the US that we wanted to see and learn from. They were all over the place…DC, Lexington, Minneapolis, Florida, Texas, Atlanta, Riverside, Philly, Camden, Northern California, and elsewhere. So we began our trek in search of something better, something truer, something more real and lasting. It was intentional displacement. It was freedom from “stuff” and “locale”.

As we went out, we began to share our songs and we discovered quickly that homes are where we really converse with each other… more than pubs and coffee shops sometimes. Our homes are where our lives are really lived. We liked that as a forum, so we started playing and planning for other “house shows”. Friends (and soon, friends of friends) would invite us and a couple dozen of their friends into their home for us to share our music and tales from the road.

Homes are still our preferred forum as they allow us to talk back and forth about our dreams and God’s dreams for our world. We’d be pleased if you resonated with our message and wanted to have us into your home. If you are interested, just contact us and we can chat.