House Concerts Sustain Musicians
Port Townsend musician Simon Lynge has performed for 25,000 fans at the famed Tivoli Gardens in Copenhagen, but tomorrow night you can hear him in Port Townsend in a much more intimate setting: RoseWind’s Common House, which holds fewer than 100 people.
This Friday’s (Sept. 16) “house concert” is also a way for the community to support this talented musician’s touring lifestyle. There is a suggested donation of $15 for the event, which is a shared billing with his wife Janna Marit.
Currently Simon is on the road more than half the year, going wherever his record label, Lo–Max Records, sends him. The folk-pop singer-songwriter-guitarist recently returned from three months touring the UK, Ireland, Belgium, Germany, Denmark, Norway, and Sweden, opening for Emmylou Harris, and playing several solo gigs including the famed Glastonbury Festival. He leaves next week on a West Coast tour.
“There are gaps in income, and you can’t easily have a job to come back to in between tours,” explains Simon’s wife, Janna Marit, a stay-at-home mom for the couple’s 3-year-old son. “This is the way we sustain ourselves.”
I’ve spent time in the rented cottage-in-the-woods Simon and Janna call home, and seen first-hand their attempts to live simply and sustainably on a musician’s income. Janna has created an abundant garden in their clearing—starting everything from seed and building raised beds, fences, a cold frame and a makeshift greenhouse. Living a 10-minute drive out of town, they own one car and an electric scooter, and often bike with their son in a trailer. They heat with wood and they use electricity generated from solar photovoltaic panels on the cottage roof.
Perhaps the most sustainable life decision they’ve made was to move from Los Angeles to Port Townsend in 2008, just before their son was born, to be in the same town as Janna’s parents and sister. It meant leaving a thriving music scene for a decidedly smaller one, but once they had a child, they knew family support was necessary for their artistic lifestyle to continue. They were also attracted to Port Townsend’s more sustainable footprint.
“We really did leave LA because of its lack of sustainability, and not wanting to live in a place where everything is ‘shipped in’—including the water!” Janna says.
Janna grew up on the East Coast, but Simon was raised in Greenland in a village of 40 people (and later Denmark), the son of a folk musician. Instead of beginning school at the age most children do, he helped a neighbor tend sheep. There are very few Greenlanders in the world music scene today, which makes Simon a bit of a novelty.
The opportunity to hear Simon here in a house concert only comes once or twice a year, although you may have heard him at (or heard of) the benefit concert he recently performed for Blue Heron Middle School PTA. He and Janna have also performed live on KPTZ.
Next week, Simon, Janna and son depart Port Townsend for concert halls south. He’ll be performing with Emmylou Harris in Tucson on Sept. 23 and again in Napa on Sept. 28—and the family has four private house concerts scheduled on the drive down to California, along with several other gigs.
“For a house concert, the host provides the audience, so it’s a way to get an audience in a town we’ve never been to,” Janna explains. The hosts are often strangers, too, having been introduced to them through other musician friends. A house concert can be very sociable, with potluck food or desserts shared on the break.
A house concert is also a boon for the listener. “It’s an intimate listening experience,” says Janna. “People come for the music, so it’s a ‘listening room.’ You don’t have coffee grinders in the background.
“And for performers, it’s actually a more viable way of making income. You don’t have the middleman.”
Janna (her website) is an accomplished visual artist and performer herself (on keyboards, guitar, vocals), and she will be joining Simon for several numbers tomorrow night—and perhaps performing a few lyrical solos. The evening will be an eclectic mix of each of their songs, as well as some favorite covers.
As the recipient of an impromptu “house concert” from Simon and Janna at my birthday party two years ago, I highly recommend hearing this couple’s music in person.
You can preview four songs from Simon’s debut album, The Future (#1 on the Amazon.com UK Rock charts), by choosing “Click to Listen” on his website. The title track is my favorite.
Our Simon has been compared to another Simon—Paul Simon—and his music described as “wrapping around you like a hug from an old friend.”
Photo by Maya Raven Skye
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