Andy Moore
Darren Sterud (center) playing with John Christensen and Paul Hastil, on keyboard.
It’s called a living room for a purpose, and when the purpose is live music it’s called a house concert. Anne Katz and David Wallner own the near east-side Madison home, but tonight the living room belongs to local jazz man Darren Sterud and his trio, which will play an intimate show framed by the fireplace mantle.
Outside, newly shoveled sidewalks cut lines into the white gauze of a deep, newly fallen snow. I’m relieved that this isn’t one of those house shows where boots are left at the front door and one spends the rest of the night soaking up spilled salsa into one’s woolen socks.
House shows are well established in Madison. There’s a far west-side summer series called Fairyland where two neighbors combine back lawns to create one outdoor venue. Newer to the scene are a series hosted by folk rocker Josh Harty and his wife, Jess. Then there’s Madison house concert Ground Zero: Kiki Schueler’s longstanding, year-round schedule of basement shows.
In January, Katz and Wallner hosted their 60th show. Over the years they’ve accumulated enough interest and return guests to have a concert newsletter that goes out to 600 people.
Tonight, they greet arrivers with the beaming pride of parents hosting a prom party. The show is the thing, but the setup is nothing to sneeze at. “We tear the house apart,” says Wallner. From the looks of it, that entails clearing out the space to the walls and importing a fun, mismatched collection of folding chairs from the basement. The transformation creates a space shaped like an L with rows of chairs in the living and dining rooms that seat a total of 40-plus. The band plays to both rooms from the right angle of the L.
Like most house concerts, all the proceeds go to the artists. The time leading up to the show is a fun opportunity for patrons and artists to mingle. I can hear Sterud blowing scales on his flugelhorn as I lock my bike in a backyard snowdrift. Once in the kitchen, I’m surrounded by audience members chomping cookies and cheese and crackers and sipping wine as they interact with the genial horn player.
Sterud is a natural house performer. A story leads to a song, which leads to a story, which turns into a story song. His New Orleans-style jazz set is perfectly timed to Mardi Gras just around the calendar’s corner. The skill of his players is amplified by the proximity of the performance. Keyboardist Paul Hastil (New Breed) and bassist John Christensen trade seriously out-there solos with Sterud, who switches off effortlessly from horns to drum kit, sometimes within the same song.
Sterud engages with Katz and Wallner between numbers, much to the couple’s delight. This is a tricky dynamic that veteran house show patrons call “host insertion.” It’s fun to see hosts become part of the show in their own home, but a little can go a long way. At one point, after some ribbing from Sterud, Wallner jokes that he could withhold the check. The audience groans.
Just before intermission — during which Katz and Wallner run a fun raffle that leads to a CD giveaway — I realize I’m completely distracted by a young couple sitting across the aisle from me. They’ve been watching their phone with at least as much focus as they are giving the musicians playing their asses off 10 feet in front of them. Turns out they live right next door. A baby monitor app is sending their device real-time audio/video of their sleeping daughter. Well then. It doesn’t get much more house concert than that.
Average number of CDs sold by artists at Katz/Wallner house concerts: 20
Number of chairs in storage: 60
Capacity: 60 (in warm weather, when the porch windows are opened)
Artists who played first show on Dec. 2, 2011: Sims Delaney-Potthoff and Josh Harty
How we know this: Anne Katz’s spreadsheet tracking the shows, including how much they charged and how much they paid the artists
Number of people banned from house shows: 2 (a couple that was too “amorous”)
