When Ann Bova first began the Cabin Concert music series, the idea of friends
playing songs in her home and then inviting other friends to come listen seemed
a given, a very natural thing to do. From a childhood immersed in acoustic
music and a lifetime of performing, listening and absorbing all kinds of music,
she developed a deep love and appreciation for song. Through this vital sense
of how music touches, heals and bonds the human spirit, she shared her vision
with hundreds of listeners through various music performers during the
three-year run of the extremely popular series that began in 2004.
After the concerts’ demise, Bova satisfied her musical desires performing on standup bass with
local entertainers and instigating jam sessions with numerous cohorts in the
music world as frequently as possible. She attended concerts and helped to
present local music shows, but nothing fulfilled that space of musical
expression quite like hosting the Cabin Concerts.
“Music is my natural habitat. I love what music does, how it connects people,” she said. “It helps us realize our sameness and our differences melt away. It’s a universal language that I love being a part of and one of the reasons I
wanted to start the Cabin Concerts again.”
The original setting for her intimate, acoustic music shows came into being
while living in rural Pleasant Plains at the spacious, log cabin home of her
then-partner Joe Bohlen. As Bova tells the story, while she rehearsed with her
old-time folk music band, The Threshers, for a First Night Springfield show,
Bohlen commented on how good the music sounded in the cabin. Then came Bohlen’s momentous, offhand comment of, “Too bad we couldn’t do live music here,” to which Bova quickly replied, “We sure can.”
From that spark the Cabin Concerts burst from idea into reality. The first show
featured Bova’s high school friend, singer-songwriter-performer Wil Maring and her
bluegrass-based band, Shady Mix. The entire experience was such a resounding
success, what could be done but to book more shows? The first year she hosted
mostly friends, including the husband-wife duo of Jeff Barbra and Sarah Pirkle,
and the bassist for Alison Krauss, John Pennell, and his band, Troubled Water.
Building on that success she then planned for the second year, scheduling six
concerts, three each in the spring and fall, with the performers playing two
shows per weekend. She often added educational workshops to fill out the
weekend for the artists and give local performers a chance to learn from the
accomplished musicians.
“I never read the rules on hosting house concerts until years later,” Bova said. “When I did, I found out I did it all wrong.”
In a thoughtfully accidental way she had stumbled upon a national phenomenon of
having music shows in the home, or house concerts, as they are popularly
called. Promoted as the saving grace of live music shared in intimate settings,
house concerts enjoy a mythic charm for the majority of self-promoting,
working-for-a-living artists who inhabit a marketing space below the major
concert and theater level but above the coffeehouse and bar/club scene.
Acoustic singer-songwriters and traditional old-time players especially blossom
in house concerts and listening-room environments, where subtlety and nuance
are integral parts of the music performance.
The rules that Bova never read are available at www.concertsinyourhome.com, a
Web site focusing on how to begin and run a successful house concert and
includes a list of performers who would love to play in your living room. Her
interpretation of presenting performers comes from a very different perspective
than the average music lover who decides to hire a favorite singer-songwriter
and invite several friends (for a fee) to a concert in their home.
“I learned about life on the road with our bluegrass band Diamonds in the Rough,
where you’d travel all weekend to play for lots of fun, but very little pay,” said Bova. “I wanted to make a venue where musicians could get what they deserved — one that honors the artist and makes them glad they played there.”
That she did. By giving all admission money to the artist, feeding them
wonderful meals and putting them up for the weekend, she created a space that
nurtured, inspired and thrilled all who played there. It also allowed her to
get almost anybody she wanted in the acoustic, folk-bluegrass world, including
Gerry O’Beirne, a renowned guitarist and singer-songwriter from Ireland.
“I listened to his CD, Half Moon Bay, every night when I cooked dinner at home in the cabin,” said Bova. “We loved that record and one night we just thought we should get Gerry to play
here.”
After a few phone calls and assorted e-mails, O’Beirne was on the Cabin Concerts schedule. Another find during the search for
quality entertainment was Sally Barris, a Grammy-nominated, Nashville-based
songwriter who is also a performing artist. Bova was on the John Prine Web
site, checking on the possibility of bringing Prine to her house for a concert,
and caught a link to Barris’ site.
“As soon as I heard Sally sing I knew I had to have her at the Concerts,” said Bova. “And my audience loved her. I knew they would like her as much as I did.”
That leads to a few more of the reasons for Bova’s success in choosing artists for her shows. First, she goes on instinct and
picks what she likes. She then picks from what she likes to fit what her
audience would enjoy. She also generally gets artists who are personal friends
or who come recommended by friends. The only real standard she maintains is
making sure it’s acoustic and excellent. The result of this fine-tuned choosing of performers
makes for a very happy audience that returns again and again.
Bova relates a telling story about Dick Durbin, our senior U.S. senator from
Illinois, and a Cabin Concert regular. The avowed music fan used to look at the
list of scheduled performers and didn’t recognize any of the names. Then, she said, he realized it didn’t matter if he had heard of them or not, he enjoyed every show he’d been to at the Cabin.
“It’s a level of trust that developed with the crowd as we went along,” Bova explains. “The caliber of music we had was that good.”
Unfortunately when the relationship between Bova and Bohlen ended, so did the
Cabin Concerts. The last show at the cabin in the country was in 2006. Though
she had bookings in the works for another season, it was not to be. Bohlen
stayed in the house and Bova moved to Springfield where she continued working
in professional Naprapathy, a branch of Complimentary Manual Medicine.
“I’m very grateful to Joe for opening his house to doing concerts,” she said. “Our home had a reputation as one of the finest venues of its type in the
country. Claire Lynch said playing in the cabin was like playing inside an
instrument.”
As recently as a few weeks ago when Bova attended the International Folk
Alliance music conference in Memphis, Tenn., she found her reputation preceded
her. When mentioning she once hosted the Cabin Concerts in Pleasant Plains,
Ill., musicians and promoters remembered hearing about the venue, and why
wouldn’t they? In the rough and tumble world of scrambling for gigs and dollars and
trying to book tours to promote new CDs and dealing with coffeehouse crumb
dates, barroom drunk tanks and nights on the road alone in hotel rooms or car
back seats, a good house concert venue is a memorable place to be.
To those who might think it peculiar, this idea of inviting musicians into your
house to perform, it does seem to take a special kind of person to open their
home to strangers and host a concert in the living room. Bova claims to come by
it naturally, growing up in southern Illinois with a family absorbed by music.
Her father, Dale Whiteside, was a professor at Southern Illinois University in
Carbondale, and a dedicated, enthusiastic ethnomusicologist, which means he not
only played music, he studied it as well. Bova recalls growing up without
television, but with plenty of music instruments available at all times.
“Whenever we’d go visit other people we hardly left the house without our instruments and
when guests would come see us they usually arrived ready to play,” she said. “That’s just how it was. Bringing music into the house was a natural thing.”
Her father hosted annual bluegrass festivals and jam sessions on the family farm
for years, a tradition Bova’s brother continues to uphold. A weekend is set aside and friends come from all
over, set up camp in the orchard area, and pick and play all day and all night.
There are bonfires, cookouts, drinks and, of course, many a song circle, pickin’ party, and all around jamming in every direction. Bova as you might expect is
everywhere at once, playing her bass or guitar, singing and encouraging
everyone to participate.
“It’s an itch or a chromosome disorder. I need to do this. It’s part of who I am,” she said. “When the Cabin Concerts stopped, so many people missed it, especially me. Now
that we’ve started up again, the response has been overwhelming. It’s a magical moment.”
Many times the word magic came up when discussing the reason for the success of
the music series. Magic is a very open-ended word that means many things to
many people; yet it somehow describes this feeling that seems indescribable or
at least undeterminable. What is this thing that people feel when entranced by
music and words, this feeling of euphoria mixed with elation and rapture that
is so hard to explain but so wonderful to feel?
“One of the key factors is the intimacy of the setting. That’s where the magic comes in,” said Bova. “I’m not willing to compromise on that. It’s why it works, because of the music in the setting creating this overall
magical, musical experience.”
Locating a suitable spot where Bova could work her magic is the main reason it
took so long to book another show under the Cabin Concert name. She bases much
of her decision making on personal inspiration, and designs her venue with a
keen sense of aesthetics, resulting in a mix of spirituality and practicality
that allows a show to feel good, look great, and exude enchantment while
running smoothly, on time and without a hitch in service, sound quality or
space usage. It’s a gift that serves the audience well and suits the schedule of a few
high-quality shows per year, rather than the more frequent bookings most venues
require to stay in business.
But along with that choice of doing shows when she chooses came the handicap of
finding a location. Without a home that doubles as an occasional venue, Bova
searched for a place that suited her tastes in setting and that was available
on an as-needed basis. When she discovered Gerry O’Beirne was touring the Midwest around the St. Patrick’s Day holiday, it seemed the Cabin Concerts were destined to live again, if only
she could find the right spot.
“I had to find a room with an intimate feel. That’s why it took two years to start again,” she said. “I can’t do it in a theater. We need a listening-room environment.”
She found it at a place that has gone through a few different names and
proprietors in the last several years. Now called Upstairs at Charles and Limey’s in Phil’s Lounge, most recently before that it was the Loft, and is likely best known to
the community as the really neat place above where Baur’s Restaurant used to be. The upstairs room seats about 120 patrons comfortably
with bare brick walls, rounded windows and wooden beams giving the room a warm
and natural feel and sound. There’s a nice-sized stage in the corner opposite from the entrance (not so common as
one might think in music venues), various heights of tables and chairs to allow
for good sight lines, and a staff willing to work with Bova’s idea of what a venue needs to be and do for a Cabin Concert experience.
“We’re no longer a house concert. It’s now a listening-room setting,” she said. “We can host the music, but we don’t have to move the furniture anymore.”
That’s not quite true because she’ll likely be scooting tables around and exchanging bar stools with lower seated
chairs to improve someone’s view and make the room more appealing and accessible. Overall there are many
differences between hosting a concert in the home versus taking it to a public
place. But then again, many basics remain the same.
“Being able to bring great artists into an intimate setting where you aren’t tiers away in a balcony means so much to me,” said Bova. “Performers like it. They feed off it and the audience feeds off that. Barriers
are down. It’s about connecting.”
Many other good things happen as well. The audience can visit with performers
before and after the show and during breaks, buy merchandise directly from the
artist, ensuring all the money earned goes straight to the source, and continue
the longtime tradition of sharing live music within an intimate atmosphere.
Now that the New Cabin Concerts are rolling along, Bova is in contact with
musician friends and well into booking the rest of 2009 in earnest. An updated
Web site is in the works at www.thecabinconcerts.com and there is talk of
producing a CD sampler of songs from previous concert performers. The shows
almost always sell out and all seats are sold in advance, so get in on the act
early if you want to attend. In fact the upcoming O’Beirne show is already full. Future artists on the very-likely-to-come-true wish
list of top-shelf artists from the diverse, acoustic music world include the
likes of Tim O’Brien, Robinella, Missy Raines, Jack Williams and others that tickle the fancy
and strike a chord with the enterprising and spirited Bova.
“This only works if it inspires me. It’s a labor of love,” she said. “Songwriters and musicians are here to pass on the stories and songs, and we need
to hear them. It’s an essential part of being human.”
Contact Tom Irwin at tirwin@illinoistimes.com
This article appears in Mar 5-11, 2009.
