The first time we saw our home-to-be, my wife Lynn Phares said, “This place would be perfect for house concerts.” This came out of the blue, but it made sense. We are both passionate about music, especially Americana and roots music. While living in Silver Spring, MD, we had been to a house concert and loved it. There is an immediacy that comes from being in a small, informal setting and listening to a live performer without the distractions and noise of a bar or nightclub. It’s like going to a tiny, friendly concert hall. Plus, you get a chance to talk to the artist and other people who enjoy the same kind of music. It’s a great way to experience music.

Lynn was right about the house being ideal for house concerts. It’s a grand 100-year-old house south of Lorain and just west of Fulton. It was clearly built for entertaining. The foyer, living room, and huge dining room flow into one another, providing plenty of room and good sight lines. The high ceilings and old wood have great acoustics. There is lots of street parking because it is right by Greenwood Park. Of course, there were some limitations, too. No AC. The kitchen had been demoed 15 years prior and never rebuilt. Six outlets total on the first floor. Three different types of yellow vinyl flooring upstairs. Very gross bathrooms.

After two years of renovations, we decided to work on Lynn’s vision of house concerts. We did a successful one-off show for a friend-of-a-friend in late 2009, proving that it would work. Many of the musicians we liked never played in Cleveland, so we traveled to see them and talked to them after the show to gauge their interest in playing a house concert. To our surprise, it was possible to get really good performers to come. That was enough to convince us to go for it. Mechanic Street House Concerts launched in January 2011 with our neighbor’s band, The Worried Men. 45 people came and had a great time. The band enjoyed it and made good money from the donations.

            Over time, we’ve worked out the kinks. The band sets up in the living room and chairs are set up there, the foyer, and the dining room. The volume is kept just loud enough that everyone can hear. There are two sets, with an intermission between for snacks and conversations. Kind friends loan us benches, chairs, and a PA and to help us manage the night of. We require people to have reservations so that we know who will be coming. We’ve set up mechanicstreetmusic.com, a Facebook page, and a mailing list. We’ve learned to cap the audience at 50 and to only host performers we really love.

We keep getting great musicians, mostly people on tour but some Cleveland-based artists, too. We look for artists that most people haven’t heard of and who have strong original music and the chops to play any venue. The artists we’ve had include Kristi Rose and Fats Kaplin (Fats is touring with Jack White of the White Stripes), Brown Bird (who were featured at Newport Folk Festival the past two years), and Brent Kirby and the Lost Fortunes (recently named Cleveland’s best musician by the Scene).

The audience members have been wonderful, too. They’re enthusiastic and generous to the perfomers, friendly during the intermissions, and great about spreading the word. Our neighbors and other people we’ve met in Ohio City have been very supportive. We have people come from as far as Aurora, too. It’s a great mix and a number of people we’ve met have become our friends. It’s built relationships that we never would have expected, like the woman from Hudson who frequently comes to the shows and taught yoga in Greenwood Park this summer.      

We host the concerts for a number of reasons. We love music and enjoy sharing new music with other people. All of the money goes to the performers and supporting independent musicians, whose labor of love is usually underpaid, means a lot to us. Lynn loves company and this gives us an excuse to host more parties. We get to meet interesting new people at every concert.

            The house concerts also let us be ambassadors for Ohio City and show off the fun people and cool houses that make it a wonderful place to live. When we were looking for houses in 2007, everyone steered us away from south of Lorain. Then we found this great house, looked at the crime stats and found that there is less crime than most other parts of Ohio City, and – most importantly – met some very welcoming neighbors. Meeting the people who live in a neighborhood is the best way to learn what it is really like.

Most visitors to Ohio City don’t get that chance because they don’t go beyond the restaurants and bars on West 25th Street or the West Side Market. Two thirds of the people who have come to our concerts live outside of the near west side and they have gotten to know Ohio City a little better by meeting neighborhood residents. There’s no better way to challenge someone’s stereotypes about the neighborhood than to invite them into your home and have them meet some of your friends.