A Belleville House Concert Home
Sometimes, home truly is sweet.
I’ve always wondered how I became so obsessed with music. I didn’t grow up in a particularly musical house, although I do remember my mom playing Jim Croce and Three Dog Night records when I was really little.
She also had this Tele House box set of “hits of the ‘60s”—we’re talking a notch below K-Tel—that introduced me to Alex Chilton (“The Letter” by The Box Tops), Otis Redding, The Byrds, ? and the Mysterians, girl groups, Percy Sledge, The Animals … I mean, this set was absolutely loaded with what was considered second- and third-tier hit songs that Tele House probably licensed for next-to-nothing a few years past their prime, but were actually a blueprint for alternative, punk, and modern R&B. I fucking loved it.
That set followed me through life until sometime in the 1990s when I no longer had a turntable. When I found the complete set at a record sale in the early 2010s for $5, I’m not exaggerating when I say that I stood at the crate and wept. And you better believe I would have happily paid ten times more than a fiver for it.
(I also made a streaming playlist of the whole collection so I’ll be less likely to lose all of it should the physical copy disappear. It’s linked past the paywall below for Big Spender paid subscribers. Also, as I was writing this, my musician friend Drew sent me this article that, despite the rage-baity title, covers some pretty incredible discoveries about the evolution of pop music. And since I’m supposed to be writing about travel, I could also get into regionalism and the role place plays in pop music and we’ll be here for a week.)
Anyway, all this is to say that somewhere down the line I realized that there were families that not only played records in their homes, but also made music in their homes, and this made me a bit jealous. I wanted that. Maybe I watched too many “Partridge Family” reruns in the same era, but I always felt like I was missing something crucial to who I was by not having people around me who would bust out a full band in the sunken den at any given moment.
We didn’t even have a sunken den. Was I truly raised in the 1970s?
As an adult, I now know where to get that homemade music fix—house concerts! God, I love a house concert. I’d love to hit house concerts when I travel, but I haven’t done the research to find them. Someday.
Earlier this year my friend Courtney, who works for Explore Belleville, tapped me to write about restaurants for their most recent city guide. And because she’s smart, Courtney got my friend Alicia to write about Belleville’s music venues. Because we have quite a few of them. Considering that the town’s modern claim to fame is being home base for Uncle Tupelo and the alt country explosion of the 1990s, it makes sense not only that we have venues, but that we have some unusual ones. Like the one Alicia didn’t mention in the article: her home.
I met Alicia and her husband Paul when our kids were little and attending the same elementary school in our neighborhood. I don’t remember exactly how we met, since their son is two years older than CJ, which is a lifetime in first grade, but I’m glad we did. Even if Alicia did cajole me into being president of the parent-teachers organization the same year we got a stuffy, frou-frou girly-girl new principal who looked at me with sheer terror the first time we met.
The principal also called me to the principal’s office when CJ wrote a manifesto about the fascist—CJ’s word—nature of a new cafeteria rule. CJ wasn’t in trouble. I was, because I posted the manifesto on my Facebook page, thus partaking in behavior unbecoming of a PTO president.
That lady didn’t last long in Belleville.
Meanwhile, Alicia and I are also both Belleville transplants, and we do just fine around this weird little town that’s technically a suburb of St. Louis, but really is its own thing despite being a 15-minute drive to the Mississippi River and downtown STL.
Speaking of, Alicia and Paul live in a truly awesome house in our neighborhood, which I’m told was a wreck when they bought it. It’s been beautifully rehabbed and sits on one of the Mississippi River bluffs that ring the western edge of Belleville, offering some of the most spectacular views of the St. Louis skyline, especially at sunset. Not that I ever remember to take a photo of it when I’m there, since I’m usually engrossed in conversation or live music, because Alicia and Paul host the occasional house concert.
I’m pretty sure they started by having some local acts play at Alicia’s birthday party a few years ago, during the time when I lacked functioning knees, so I didn’t go. But at the beginning of 2023, my friend Edward asked me if I knew of anyone who might want to host a show by Official Claire, a duo from Chicago that includes ex-Wilco member LeRoy Bach. Since Alicia and Paul are also Wilco fans with this awesome, spacious house and yard, I roped them in.
On a chilly March night, Edward and a band of St. Louis ringers warmed up a packed house with a selection of songs he recorded with his friend Jay Bennet (also formerly of Wilco) and some classic pop covers. Then Official Claire played their atmospheric, ethereal pop full of guitar loops and smartly quirky lyrics. It was a great time.
So, three years pass. In June, Official Claire played Solid Sound in Massachusetts. Unfortunately, it was on the day I skipped because of a migraine. Alicia and Paul caught their set and raved about Claire’s musical evolution and hey! There’s another house show coming up! Let’s do it again!
And we did last Sunday. Just like in 2023, my friend Amy came up from the very southernmost tip of Illinois—Cairo—for the occasion. She’s another friend I met at Solid Sound, and was partially responsible for finally getting me over myself and making my first trip to Los Angeles in 2020, for which I’m forever grateful.
The rest of the crowd was peppered with familiar faces from so many parts of my life: around the neighborhood, CJ’s old school, Wilco shows, the St. Louis music scene. Being somewhat of a floater friend who doesn’t so much have a social circle, but drifts from group to group as they fit whatever identity I’m feeling at the time, it’s always lovely to be in a cross-section of any of those groups.
Edward Burch and I have been friends since 2019 when I interviewed him about his friend and collaborator Jay Bennett for my Woody Guthrie manuscript, since Bennett was instrumental in the making of my beloved Mermaid Avenue albums. As I walked onto Alicia and Paul’s back deck with its view through the lush woods to the skyline, I approached Edward, who introduced me to his parents after all these years.
Then Amy found me and, like last time, we headed to the living room to sit together during the set that started with Edward, John Horton on bass, Gary Hunt on guitar, and Patrick Hewley on drums. The quartet dipped heavily into the track list from The Palace at 4 A.M., the album Edward and Jay released in 2002. Much to my delight, they included two Woody Guthrie covers that Jay kept from Wilco’s Mermaid Avenue research: “No Church Tonight” and “Little White Cottage.” Watch their performance of the former:
I jumped to record “No Church Tonight” because it’s my favorite of the two songs, with its tale of a nefarious preacher taking advantage of a young parishioner who, it would seem, exacts her revenge. Later, though, I realized I should have recorded “Little White Cottage,” a longing for a beloved home, instead.
If you’ve been reading lately, you know I’ve been spending a lot of time at home as I receive treatment for my migraines and other vestibular system issues, and rebuild my finances from my summer travels. It’s a bittersweet thing, since I love so many places. Home means responsibilities I don’t necessarily want, work I can’t really do right now, and stagnation, which makes me itch like I have a rash.
But it’s also so hard to leave. I have my nests around my house where my life takes place: behind my L-shaped desk next to the front door where I do my writing under the glow of my grandmother’s pink ceramic lamp. The spot on the couch with my stack of books. That’s where morning coffee and evening reading happens while I watch the squirrels at the feeder in the window. Conversations with CJ and, most nights, dinner happen there, too. And bed, where I’ve spent far too much time lately with the migraines, but it’s a soft sanctuary with Woody the cat, more books, and piles of pillows and comforters like I’m The Princess and the Pea.
No matter where I go, home is always here. Even with the empty boxes in the dining room and tumbleweeds of Scarlett’s long dog fur and busted-up vine-covered picket fence that needs to be torn down before it just gives up and keels over. And don’t talk to me about the half of a dead tree lying in the side yard.
I’m lucky. Home is in a town where I’m comfortable being my weird self because most of the folks I know here are a bit off-kilter, too.
It’s a town where I can happen across honor system farm stands loaded with tomatoes still warm from the August morning sun and peaches that drip juice down my forearms when I bite them.
Then I can make a run to an indie bookstore that hosts book clubs for smut, novels with fat protagonists, progressive women, LGBTQA folks, and kids who want to learn cursive writing.
A town with one of the best restaurants in the St. Louis area, tucked behind a counter in a coffee house, so unassuming you could miss it hidden inside the Victorian-era train depot.
A town with far more parades than normal, way more street festivals than necessary, and a fountain that gets name-checked in one of my all-time favorite songs, created by one of the best songwriters of our generation who grew up down the street. Where old men full of Stag Beer still greet him with, “Well, look at the rock n’ roll star, come back home!” when he’s here.
It’s where a mom from my kid’s school became my rock n’ roll buddy, who I see more often at out-of-town shows than I do around the neighborhood, although every morning I drink my coffee from a beautiful mug she made and dropped off on my doorstep.
And sometimes, I can have a sleepless night, fill that mug full of coffee, down it, go back to bed for three hours, down another mugful, then wander up the bluff to her house to watch a show by some of the region’s best musicians.
Staying home’s not that bad sometimes.
After Edward and friends wrapped up with a cover of Richard Thompson’s “Wall of Death” (Or R.E.M.’s, depending on your perspective. Either way, it’s another one of my favorite songs.), Official Claire switched gears from Burch’s guitar-driven pop-rock to her breathy looped dream pop. Alicia was right—Claire’s degree of confidence as a performer has skyrocketed in the three years since she was last in the living room. LeRoy Bach also seemed more comfortable with the material, having an obvious good time on guitar. Their set was brief, but sonically surprising and fun. I didn’t catch the title of this song, but it was my favorite, with its biting and witty lyrics and resonate guitar tones.
Was this what I imagined as a kid, sitting on the floor in front of the stereo with my oversized headphones and cheap compilation albums, dreaming of a home filled with people playing music? No. The daydreams were far tidier and tighter, with no room for improvisation or error or the humanity of being mere feet apart, musicians and listeners, eye contact locked during the intimate act of creation in the same place where someone kicks off their shoes and watches TV or feeds the dog on the couch.
This was so much better.
When asked to list my most influential albums, this is at the top of the list. Enjoy on Apple Music or Spotify.
WHAT
WHAT