Happy Saturday night, everybody, listening across the Civic Media Radio Network.
Hope you got that app on your phone, civicbedia.us.
Get that app.
Find it at the Any App Store.
Don't forget Maxine Kevin coming up at 10 o'clock tonight, rocker.
Jimmy, just last week, we interviewed Create Wisconsin's director, Ann Katz.
And during the interview, we learned a lot about, we learned a lot.
Including that Ann's hubby, David Walner puts together live music shows in his living room and backyard.
And they call it our house concerts.
Since 2011, this Madison power couple have put more than 90 concerts together and have featured local,
national and international performers, focusing on Americana and Jess.
It's a house party with music.
Here's hoping that they have a lazy boy, Jimmy.
David and welcome to Maxine radio.
Oh, thank you.
They laughed at power couple.
And I love that.
I totally agree.
Oh, my gosh.
That's adorable.
You know, Creed was constantly in our house concerts.
I mean, holy cow, it's a music conglomerate.
I don't know the last time we had a guest Ann when a guest was on two weeks in a row.
How about that?
I think this might be something that we have to put in the record books.
We are breaking.
We're breaking all kinds of records with all different things tonight, which is really fun.
You guys, I am so curious about how you do this.
Your house, well, it's called our house concerts.
Our house.
It's a very, very permanent.
Yes, I grew up.
It's still nice.
This concept, though, how did you get this started?
And I mean, where do you take inspiration to actually go?
I'm going to turn my house into a live music venue.
What the heck?
Oh, no.
12 years ago, we were sitting in the merchant restaurant up off the square.
And Josh Hardy, a local.
Oh, yeah.
Americana singer.
And Sims Delaney pod off with harmonious whale.
We're doing a show.
And we approached them after their performance after we had dinner.
We said, we've been thinking about doing a house concert.
You guys want to come over and be the first in December.
And they said, sure.
And it worked fantastic.
And we got people to show up.
And 12 years later, we're still rocking their own.
And we're David counted.
Yeah, you got to get ready.
Sorry, David counted.
And I think we're almost at 90 concerts.
Oh, my gosh.
Yeah.
Wow.
And it was just, we'd heard about the house concerts before.
And we thought we would just do one.
Just to see what it was like.
And we said, that worked pretty well.
And we had a jazz singer come up from Chicago with her piano player
on her second or third.
And then we just said, hey, this is a gas.
That's good excuse to clean your house.
Oh.
You got to get the toilet bowl and get on the carpet clean.
Also, we like to have parties.
So this is just an obvious thing.
It's a house party with music.
But is this a lot of work, too?
I mean, oh, my gosh, you guys.
Well, okay.
Here's my story.
Okay.
I was going to tell it.
So it's a lot of work, but it's.
It's a lot of work, but it's, you know, it's worth it.
But there is always a moment when I'm setting up the chairs.
I'm setting up the chairs and I'm moving.
I'm moving furniture around and it's getting stuck in the doorway.
And I say, I don't want to do this anymore.
It's too much work.
She couldn't tell you the way she really says it.
Oh.
I don't want to swear on the air.
Thank you.
She was melting the word.
Yeah.
Yeah.
And, you know, I have a little meltdown.
And then I set the rest of the chairs up and it's fine.
I will say that we started doing outdoor concerts.
We had to cancel five concerts in 2020, unfortunately.
And then all of a sudden we thought, wait, we could do it in our neighbors' backyard.
Our neighbors are very nice.
And so now we do about as many outdoor concerts as we do indoor concerts.
And that's easier because I don't have to set up the chair.
Absolutely.
But it's a different feeling.
Yeah.
We can get more people.
We've had beautiful nights with full moons coming up when the musicians are playing.
We had a performer from Chicago a couple of summers ago named Radislav Lorkovic.
And he was playing in the birch trees and the moon came up at about 830 in the backyard.
And he said, this is the Carnegie Hall of House concerts.
So we should use that in our promotions sometime.
I love it.
What do your neighbors say about this?
I mean, do you have any neighbors?
We have lots of neighbors.
We live here at Tenney Park.
We live in a urban neighborhood.
But we have never had anyone complain.
I mean, it's folk music.
We're not blasting heavy metal in the backyard.
We usually try to tell the neighbors around us that we're going to be doing the concerts.
Our neighbors right behind us, they sit in their backyard and listen to the music.
And then they give us money for the musicians.
Oh my gosh.
I mean, everybody wins.
Yes.
Just so you know, iron plow would be interested in playing in your backyard.
You know, I think I can't think of any of that.
Are you good enough?
Well, we're talking here.
Are we having fun?
We're trying to see if the stones will come.
There you go.
See, they're going to be iron plow or the stones.
We don't know yet.
Now, I heard that you guys saw tonight's guest, the listening party, for the first time,
and an atwood fest, and eventually booked them for a concert in your own home.
It sounds like a fun way to research bands.
Tell us about that.
Yeah.
You're kidding.
We were 2016, and we were over there, I think in August or July, and they were playing.
We said, these guys are pretty cool.
And you know, and thought they were good looking.
You know, and I said, well, I don't know.
I agree.
And they're weird.
Young and cute.
No, no, yeah.
And we approached them after the show.
And I made, I said, you know, we'd love to have you come to a show for us.
And we promised to give you all the money that we'd take in plus a lot of free beer.
And when I said beer, their eyes lit up, and we shook hands, and we had a deal right then.
Wow.
But that is kind of how we research the, I mean, research.
We like music.
So we go out to hear music, and we have so many clubs here now.
It's, you know, it's really wonderful, and all the festivals.
And then David spends a fair amount of time looking around the interwebs to find people.
And now that we've been doing it for a while, we get two or three agents or musicians contacting us.
We know.
Not only in this country, but from Sweden, South Africa.
We had, in the last six months, we've gotten requests from a guitar player from Japan,
duo from Italy, a trio from Australia, and a guy from Brazil.
What's the biggest artist that you've ever had play in your backyard or in your living room?
Have you heard of Alison Russell?
Yes.
Yes.
So before she was a famous mega superstar like she is now, and I hope she wins a Grammy out tomorrow night.
She and her husband had a band called Birds of Chicago.
And they were at our house three times.
Oh my gosh.
In fact, and amazing together, and she's amazing by herself.
But they, they had, they brought their daughter on tour until she was old enough to go to school.
So we had the baby with the baby sitter in the basement and Ali and JT playing upstairs.
And they were the last band we did before the pandemic, before we shut down.
And you know, after that, she went off in as now having this amazing career.
And she's going to play with Joni Mitchell tomorrow night.
You know, that's amazing.
So she's kind of our, you know, we're very proud of her.
Like we knew her when.
Wow.
Sort of follow her that way.
So that's pretty cool.
This, this is blowing me away.
Dave and Ann here from Create Wisconsin and our house concerts.
All right.
So if I, I'm listening to this, I'm thinking to myself, I would love to do something like this.
Open my whole.
I know that's why music.
You said it earlier to Terry.
It's not scary.
But it does.
What are, what are, if someone's out there thinking about doing this?
What is some of the best advice that you could offer?
Maybe a couple bit falls that we don't know about.
Oh, buy a six pack and come over to our house.
We'll give you the low down.
No, it's the performers often stay with us overnight.
We've had people stay with us three or four nights in a row before they had off the west coast.
We put them up.
We feed them.
We show them around the city.
We put them in a kayak on the lake or get them on bikes.
Wow.
And they're so grateful, especially, I mean, it's like we, and we pay really well.
We give them all the money that we have that we take in from the show.
We don't.
Which is not very much.
No, but all the money we take in from the show is goes to the performers.
We don't keep it nickel and that's part of our commitment.
And people are so grateful and thankful.
So you're opening your home.
You're feeding musicians.
They get to sleep there.
They get to sleep there.
You're giving them to their house.
Yeah.
You're giving them all your money.
You never find that.
Yeah.
You all like to be like given this key to the city or something like that.
That's amazing.
It's so charitable.
You know, it, I mean, as we said, we like to have parties.
So we just add music.
And, you know, you have to make sure that the house is clean.
I will say that are clean enough.
Yeah.
You set up the chairs.
You put some food out.
I mean, every house concert is different.
Some people take money at the door.
We get people to pay beforehand.
And you just let people in your house and you have music for them.
It's not that.
It's, it's not hard.
It's pretty easy.
And when these people say they go do so far sounds like.
Yes.
The listing party band and they get $100.
It's like, my, what do you do that?
And that's all they're paid.
I did not realize that when you hear about it.
I mean, I know people love so far.
So our house concerts have.
Tana shows coming up in 2024.
I'm a bust in on them.
Is Saturday, February 17th with Danny Nichols and Sarah Peacock.
Give us a little preview of your upcoming concert schedule.
Well, I'll say, sorry, David.
I'm just going to bust in here.
Danny was at our house two summers ago and played in the backyard.
And it was, it wasn't raining all day.
And then when she started to sing, it started to rain.
But people were holding umbrellas over her head.
And which was one magical.
She stayed with us for four days because she went to
Mile of Music in Appleton first and then came over to our house.
And she was delightful.
And now she's coming back with her friend, Sarah, who we don't know.
But we, you know, we love her sound.
I guess they're bringing Sarah's baby with them too.
And the repair.
So, you know, we're really, we're always like with the listening party,
which was at our house three times.
We're always glad when people will come back.
Yeah.
So we're looking forward to that.
We've got another group that was at our house a few years ago
called Ruffin Tumble.
And they're from.
Oh, sorry.
They live on the road, actually, but they're from Nashville.
A woman named Ruth Wyand from Denver.
No, from.
From Durham.
Oh, sorry.
You know, a guy named Mike Fatali in August from California.
And then Katie Dahl, who's from Door County.
And very, you know, she's based in Door County.
That's where she lives.
But she tours around the country with Peter Mulvey and Willie Porter.
And so she's coming in November.
And as we said, we get so many requests.
I'm sure we'll fill in.
We can do one every six weeks to two months.
We have to have time to promote them.
But we're hoping to get a few more concerts this year.
So someone wants to get in, though.
I mean, is it a secret password?
Or.
You got to get a hold of the neighbor.
So, yeah.
So here's what has to happen.
David is sitting at the computer listening.
And he'll say, come here this.
And if I come over to the computer and go after three seconds,
oh, then we know that that's who we want.
So there's a lot of really good music out there.
But we kind of have to be struck by this feeling that these people are really good.
They would fit well in our house.
People would want to come see them.
And we'd have fun.
So if we want to come see them, how do we get in the door?
Well, we're on Facebook.
Wow.
We're our house concerts.
And then I can give my, we can give our email address.
Sure. Go ahead.
Which is Ann Dave, a N N E D A V E at chorus CHORUS.net.
That's awesome.
We don't have a website.
You know, we're very, we're very low tech.
That's right.
That's great, though, because this is enough.
You know when people are getting excited about something and are going to be attending.
Yeah.
We post everything on, you know, um, ward and on.
Oh, sure.
We now have an email list of over a thousand people.
I believe.
And we use that a lot.
That's amazing.
Uh, Dave and thank you so much for coming here.
Thank you.
Appreciate you.
I love what you do.
Thanks for having us.
Our house concerts.
It's up on Facebook, you said.
Yes.
And get on that mailing list, too.
That's, uh, that's probably key right there.
Let's do some music now from, um, um, let's do, let's do Amelia Ford.
That sounds like a winner, right?
We got live in the layer coming up with the listening party.
It's Max Sink on Civic Media.
We are local music.
