Homeboys make some noise

It’s the kind of scene that usually unfolds at a nightclub or a bar. Dozens of kids loiter around outside. Inside, Black Volt mashes through a set of churning blues-punk. Lead singer Tim “TimTar” Moffatt screams confrontationally into the microphone, grabbing onlookers and yelling into their faces.

The spot isn’t a club, however, but a small house at 141 Moreland Ave., located on a busy thoroughfare just two stoplights from the freeway. Black Volt is playing in the dining room to a few dozen spectators in the living room. And the kids outside are sitting on the porch steps and congregating in the driveway.

But no one, including the neighbors, seems to mind: Justin Gilbert, who lives here and plays in a band called Wrister, has been throwing concerts for more than a year. He doesn’t mind if his address is published, and rarely encounters trouble with the police. “We haven’t had any noise complaints,” he says.

The house at 141 Moreland is one of several houses in the city that double as intimate concert halls. They’re a bright spot in a bad year for Atlanta’s troubled live music scene, which suffered the traumatic launch and closing of the 585 Venue (abruptly shut down by city officials), as well as the hasty demise of CJ’s Landing, the Darkside and ISP. Factor in a dearth of small and midsized all-ages clubs, and you have a major metropolitan area that can’t accommodate all the local and national bands who want to play.

“There’d be a lot of really good bands from out of town who, whenever I’d talk to them, seemed to have a bad impression of their experiences in Atlanta. Most bands end up playing at 21-and-up bars, they wouldn’t be promoted well, and not many kids would come out,” Gilbert says. “So we started doing a couple of house shows, and it’d be a lot more fun.”

Before moving in late August, Zack Graves and roommates Melissa Anthony (who plays in several bands, including Small Framed Boy) and Nova transformed their Kirkwood home into the Banana Hammock, and threw concerts with bands such as Judi Chicago and Hubcap City. “Not everybody wants to pay five, 10, 12 dollars to go to some huge bar,” Graves says.

“Why pay that money when you can come to a house show?” he continues. “It’s a lot friendlier – there’s no bouncer or anything, there’s no doorman, there’s no bitchy bartenders or waitresses. You can just do whatever you want. It feels like a communal thing.”

As Graves talks, he sits next to Waylon Pouncy and Aaron King. Pouncy and King work overtime in the music scene: They host live shows at their Edgewood home, aka the Crackhouse; play in two bands, the Club of Rome and Devil Worshipper; and host a club night at Lenny’s Bar on Wednesdays. “We bring a bunch of our friends over, and we do it on a donate basis,” says King, who calls the Crackhouse concerts “house parties.”

Many of these homes have distinctive names such as Treehouse, Blak Casl and I Can Fly House, and specialize in a specific music genre. The 141 Moreland location hosts hardcore punk bands, Banana Hammock used to book indie-rock acts and the Crackhouse works with noise, metal and experimental artists.

House concerts have been going on in Atlanta for several years. One of the most infamous was Die Slaughterhaus, a punk-rock house and record label once co-owned by members of the Black Lips. And Rob’s House Records, which just released the Coathangers’ debut album, is also an actual house where bands played live sets for subsequent posterity on 7-inch vinyl singles.

Now, Graves and the Crackhouse dudes plan to organize into an ad-hoc network of underground music spaces that pools resources and draws touring bands. But first, Graves needs to reorganize his own house. He and his roommates were forced out of Banana Hammock last month after land developers bought the property. The trio has since moved to a new place nearby, which they’ve christened the Blood Onion. They aim to launch it in October, but Graves fears that his new neighbors might not appreciate the music.

“At the [Banana Hammock] there were vacant lots around us, and so there wasn’t a noise issue,” Graves says. “But this is primarily a residential street with families and elderly people, so I don’t know how it’s going to work out. We haven’t tried a full-on show yet.”

House concerts can seem like a lot of unnecessary work. Furniture and valuables must be hidden away in bedrooms, and walls and doors must be sound-proofed. Concerts are publicized with handbills posted at local coffee shops and record stores, phone calls to friends and through MySpace bulletins and websites. “We do some handbills, but we try to get our shows mostly through word-of-mouth so we get the right element. We don’t want the wrong people there,” King says.

On the plus side, a house party doesn’t require much overhead or production costs. And it’s a lot more fun than staring at a band on stage in a bar. “We’re not in it to make money at all,” Graves says. “It’s more of an art-for-art’s-sake kind of a thing for the local music scene.”