The Meeting House Tour is an ongoing concert series focused on bringing live music to historic gathering spaces around New England. I was lucky enough to personally partake in the first show down in Connecticut with Wise Old Moon, The Meadows Brothers and Jake Klar and am so excited to see it extending into our fine state. The next show is this coming Saturday in Concord, MA. You can get your tickets right here: http://www.brownpapertickets.com/event/2044066
Three of my personal favorites will be playing this one, so I am particularly excited. I caught up with Ian Meadows, who is the man behind putting this together, to talk about the project and what his vision is for this. Oh yeah…and check out the special video that our friends at Idlewilde Creations shot with The Wiles to promote the show. So, so good.
Check it….
RLR: How about people who aren’t familiar with the concept of the tour? Why old buildings?
Ian Meadows: Well, I guess it just came from driving by so many cool old structures here in New England, and just thinking “man, that’d be an awesome place to hear some music”. A lot of the buildings don’t get used too much, and we wanted to bring that back and get the community out and listening to some good music. We also just wanted to create more spaces in which artists could play to listening crowds.
RLR: Why did you curate these particular artists for this second show (aside from the fact that they are all Massachusetts artists of course)?
Ian Meadows: For this show, we wanted to have a diverse lineup that still made sense to have on the same bill. Dustin, Connor, Jake and I got together and came up with a list of Massachusetts artists that we really dig (there are A LOT), and then sort of separated them out so we didn’t get too much overlap, because we want to put on a well-rounded show. I think even the contrast between Ian and Dietrich is pretty noticeable; their brand of music, writing, and performance are both different from each other, and thats sort of what we’re looking for on a bill with multiple acts. Having the Wiles in the middle really mixes it up too. It’s just a really solid night of entertainment. Man, I am so excited just to see this show
RLR: So where do you see the series going next? New England or beyond? Could this even be something that happens all over the world?
Ian Meadows: I think the focus is really the New England area. Over the next few years, we want to be putting on shows in every state in the region. It started as a very “New England” sort of idea, inspired by the architecture, history, and music of the Northeast. But hey, who knows what might happen!