House Concerts – Am I Coming To A Living Room Near You?

How do you fancy hosting a live concert in your home? I’m planning House Concert tour with a bit of a twist.

Firstly What is a House Concert and how does it work?

A house concert is quite simply a live music performance in someone’s home. You invite your friends and acquaintances over to watch a live show. Each of your friends donates a few bucks/pounds/euros (depends where you are) for the privilege. You then get live music in your home. Your friends get a personalized, relaxed environment to experience great music.

It’s a rapidly growing phenomenon. In a New York Times front page article a number of years ago Dave Nachmanoff, a singer-songwriter from Southern California, said “Part of the reason for the boom of house concerts right now is people are so hungry for community but lacking in ways they can get together with other people in an intimate or friendly way that isn’t commercialized,”

Why Do A House Concert Tour?

A few weeks ago after a brief conversation with a friend in church all of a sudden it made sense to do a house concert tour.

In all the years I have been doing this (over 20 now – yikes!) I have led worship, sang, performed at local churches, big events with thousands attending, conferences both big and small, yet week-in-week-out most of what I do happens in small intimate settings. Small group in our home, sessions at C-HOP (local intercessory worship gathering) – it’s in these more intimate settings that the Lord’s presence seems more tangible, peoples lives are transformed as a result of God doing something in the room, in the intimacy of a few dozen folk gathered.

Don’t get me wrong I’m open to doing bigger events but I’m excited by the prospect of recapturing something of the early church model of house to house worship gatherings.

Where Will I Be Playing?

This is the exciting bit – it literally could be a world tour because you get to decide where I play, it could even be in your living room!

I’m asking you, my newsletter subscribers, MySpace & FaceBook friends to consider hosting or help organize a local house concert where you live. If you’re interested in that let me know where you are and based on where the interest comes from I’ll try to join-the-dots on the map and see if I can make it work. You could be in USA, Australia, Europe, UK, Ireland or somewhere else.

Seriously, nowhere is off limits to be considered.

What Can You Expect At One Of These House Concert Sessions?

You can expect passionate ‘Ethno-Celt‘ flavoured music and songs that have worship at the heart but can also be accessible to folks who are not yet followers of Jesus.

Here’s the twist. Each gig will be recorded, for a live album of the best bits and all the hosts and helpers will get a credit on the recording. Sometimes spontaneity is the highlight of these sessions and hopefully the recording will capture these unique moments.

I’d Love to Hear From You

Would you consider hosting or helping organize a house concert in your neighbourhood? 

If so I’d love to hear from you, wherever you are on the planet – ask me for my ‘Hosting A house Concert Kit’.

Comment below or email me.

Cheers – Andy

Tags: houseconcerts

Bono – A conversation on Christianity…

When I was a student U2 were local boys just starting to make some ripples on the local & UK music scene. Shirley & I went to see them play Maysfield Leisure centre in Belfast way back in 1982 (before it was knocked down).

There was already something ‘other dimensional’ about their songs and sound.

I’ve come to realise that they are probably the most high profile ‘guerrilla worship’ band in the world.

Thanks to Dave Wainscott for finding this clip of some of Bono’s quotes on Christianity.

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Tags: bonou2 christianity

Do we really need more worship songs?

Worship music in America and the west is now an ‘industry’.

That’s not necessarily a condemning statement after all Jubal, the first musician documented in Gen 4 was listed with his brothers by their professions. One brother was in agriculture, the other in manufacturing and Jubal was ‘the father of all who play the harp and flute’. It’s what he did for a living which, by the way, included fathering, mentoring and developing other artists too.

But any time you get an industry forming then the mixed motives of human nature kick in to some degree. Sometimes the industry has to self sustain and churn out product just so that it continues to exist.

So do we really need any more worship songs? There are more being written and distributed now than in any previous generation.

When wrestling with this here are three thoughts that found their way to the conscious part of my brain.

1. God likes songs. The biggest section of His book is a collection of songs.
2. If the universe’s main function is to display His glory (Ps. 19 ) and it’s expanding at an accelerating rate then it seems that even creation cannot contain enough expressions to voice worship to its creator.
3. The very last statement of the Gospels says: Jesus did many other things as well. If every one of them were written down, I suppose that even the whole world would not have room for the books that would be written.  I think the same is true of worship – there can never be enough expressions of response to the love of God.

Maybe I’m justifying to myself yet more worship songs being added to the mix but here are a few samples of the new ones including a 4/4 guitar driven version of ‘Be Thou My Vision’ that has proved popular in night clubs, festivals and even churches!

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Here’s a quick update from the studio in Nashville

As I write this I’m still in Nashville and I thought you might like to see how the recording of some of the songs from the 20/20 project is going.

We’ve been working on song number 3 (and others) from the 20/20 project ‘Your Name Is A Refuge (and we are refugees)’

Here’s a quick clip from the studio to let you see how it’s going.

Oh, if you’re interested I’m going to need some help with some lyric ideas for the other songs we’re working on. If you’d like the opportunity to help co-write on these make sure you’re registered over at OpenSourceSongs.com and I’ll keep you posted.

In the meantime here’s the video..

My producer, Neil Andrews, is also a great worship leader and really understands recording worship music. If you need a project worked on I could really recommend his services – you can work completely remotely with him via the internet (if you don’t live anywhere near Franklin, TN) you’ll get Nashville quality without Nashville prices!

Drop him a line at nra.minimoog [at] gmail.com

Cheers – Andy