In Greater Metropolitan Boston, the community of younger folk/ acoustic artists is organizing itself every day. For the first time since its inception, contemporary folk music can claim roots; it is no longer exclusively anchored in Appalachia or the American Southwest or specific traditional oral histories specific to communities. Contemporary folk music grows now from the vanguards of the nineteen-sixties; it stretches forward from the first manifestations of the New Folk found in the mid-eighties and its second wave, beginning at the end of the 1990s.

As this occurs, the changed nature of the American music venue provokes the search for alternative and creative performance space. The intense commercialization of rock in America, post-1970, dictates a venue environment conducive to that genre: generally a drinking establishment with a stage. This is a swallowing environment, in which the volume is set to overpower the sounds of the crowd and the use of alcohol and tobacco is endemic to the experience

Thus, the potential advent of the house concerts, a space capturing the freedom of the early cafe experience. It allows the artist to communicate in a meaningful way to an attentive crowd and it provides space (in the garden, in the kitchen; any space physically removed from the performance room) for creative and social interaction before, during and after the presentation.

The model that Healthy Concerts represents is one which American house concert promoters could do well to emulate. The intimate and flexible environment that the series creates transforms familiar surroundings into new spaces. Tireless effort on the part of its creators and promoters link these spaces into a breathing network (and word is that there are locations materializing in France and Germany in addition to those between Brighton and London. In the Boston area there are two major house concert series: the Fox Run and Oak Hill Acoustic. More than emulate, however, the time may be sooner rather than later for house concert advocates to enter an entirely brave new (global) environment.

Hearkening back to the golden era of Phil Graham’s Philmore Auditoriums West and East (but expanding the paradigm); the American and English house concert circuits could profit artistically and financially by linking their respective pools of artists, organizers and venues. Instead of one artist from America visiting the Healthy Concerts in Brighton or thereabouts; instead of one organizer scouting the Oak Hill or points farther in America, this proposed environment could integrate and make consistent the Trans-Atlantic performance and interaction of each respective existent environment’s players and managers.

Furthermore, the eventual result of this artist swap could prove to be an audience swap. As the artists spread word of the communities into which they enter, their respective audiences will be educated as to the nature and contents of these communities. If a promoter of one series or another offered a paid-for package of concert (or two) plus accommodation (in the guest rooms of the respective houses) it could very well attract the sort of small but important numbers of overseas patronage that will forge the experience from sound ideas into a cohesive promotional/financial whole. Shrewd pricing of these packages (which would by nature have very low cost to the promoter), so as to care for the profit margin, could eventually bankroll more elaborate packages (Phase Two packages, so to speak) wherein the cost of travel (via internet discount/auction ticketing services like Priceline.com) is included in the cost. The profit margin from this kind of development would allow for a promotional account from which travel expenses could be deferred for artists financially unable to bring their work to this international forum.
That’s an economic and management overview of the relationship proposed. The spiritual core of it, however, rests in what is already evident about this transfer. Artists make connections; they develop true trade and barter of ideas and creativity, given a space and time in which to do this. The goal then, is not to simply erect a viable entertainment/performance construct, but to generate a valid and growth-oriented space and time for the exchange to begin.

When we speak of artistic communities we often speak of an environment. That environment may be Warhol’s loft/performance space in the latter half of the twentieth century; the economic patron-artist environment of the de Medicis or the venue networks of promoters like Phil Graham - but it is really the connection between the cells; the individuals and their works that is described. The time is ripe in America (and England?) for a fresh avenue for acoustic and folk performance - and the environment of the house concert is already proven as the most likely candidate. Even the established clubs (e.g. Harvard Square, Cambridge’s Club Passim) that continue to survive as folk venues are simply mimicking the intimate atmospheres of the nearest private residential listening crowd.

If this, then, is already the general drift of the folk environment in America; and if the success of Healthy Concerts in England and its phenomenal growth indicate the temperature of the English folk environment - these respective communities may be holding within their grasp an international movement. The possibility of birthing a house concert network that spans not just towns and coastlines, but oceans ... this is the matter at hand.