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FeedGood Vibes
With a series of concerts that began in his living room, Mike Ligon created the perfect intimate venue for Denver’s thriving indie-folk scene.
There’s something that just feels different about a HomeVibe Presents show.
It has to do with the Persian rug and antique lamps on stage, the pin-drop silence of the audience, the flick-ering candlelight, the carefully thought-out lineups mixing established singer-songwriters with new folksy, rootsy talent and touring acts with local favorites. HomeVibe shows actually start on time, and the audience arrives accordingly, excited to see the first of four acts as much as the headliner, especially if she happens to be local. And there’s always a giddy grin on the face of the fan who promotes and puts these shows together. He still, admittedly, geeks out at most every artist, even the ones who have long since become his friends.
A software developer by day, Mike Ligon moved to Denver from the East Coast about 13 years ago and quickly found the style of music he liked here but not the venues. He wanted something more intimate. In 2004, he started hosting small concerts in his own living room. He brought in folding chairs and baked cookies and decorated the space with big antique lamps and lots of candles. By May 2006, he had bought a condo in Park Hill. The complex had a clubhouse with a lot more space, and he decided to try turning these home concerts into an actual business. He’d gotten to know Reed Foehl, of the band Acoustic Junction, just by being a longtime, dedicated fan, and he asked Foehl if he’d play the first HomeVibe show. “Of course I was in,” Foehl says. “Instead of a club that doesn’t give a crap, Mike really cares and puts a lot into making the experience the best it can be.”
Ligon baked cookies, brought lamps and candles, and set up the stage in front of a fireplace. Foehl tapped his local following. Ligon says, “I sent out emails after that that said, ‘I kinda started this house concert series. The artist I worked with last was Reed Foehl.’ People were like, ‘Wow, What you’re doing must be pretty cool.’”
Soon, he was working with Katie Herzig and Gregory Alan Isakov. People were paying as much as $25 for shows, provided they could bring their own booze. Ligon loves paging through photos on his Website. “Greg in a living room; that just doesn’t happen anymore,” he says. “A lot of what I do with HomeVibe is just being out in the community, seeing who people are talking about, and then getting to work with them early.”
Dan Craig had been going back and forth between med school and music when Ligon saw him at Dazzle in 2006 and invited him to do a show. “I didn’t know what to think about it being in his clubhouse, but I could tell this was a guy who really loved music and appreciated artists,” Craig says. “It felt like playing for friends and family. I’d been playing around town at clubs a little, and you don’t get that.”
By late 2007, Ligon had left the clubhouse and started promoting shows at the Lion’s Lair, but it didn’t last. “We tried to transform a punk room, and we shouldn’t have,” Ligon says. “Just the amount of energy it took to get that room to feel like I wanted it to feel — it was two hours of kicking drunk people out.”
His first show that January at the Walnut Room, engineered for intimate concerts, was like night and day. It has been HomeVibe’s home base ever since. You can find Ligon there before one of his shows, making sure the artists have everything they need, laying down his big Persian rug, unloading lamps from the backseat of his Subaru, and setting up little battery-operated flameless candles on each table. He’s brought acts like The Fray there. (He jokes that the photos on his Website are proof they got the idea for their “We Build Then We Break” video, with lamps all over the stage of a New York club, from him.)
In the past year, Ligon’s also put on HomeVibe shows at venues as big as the Oriental, like last year’s second-anniversary concert, which was combined with the release of Dan Craig’s second CD. HomeVibe and Craig have grown up together. At the same time, Craig says he’s seen a real community of singer-songwriters emerge in Denver, and he thinks HomeVibe has played a big part. “The friendships and professional contacts get blurry,” Craig says. “It just feels like we’re hanging out with those guys a lot.” That community is made up of a lot of regular HomeVibe artists like his own fiancée Jessica Sonner, Megan Burtt, Josh Queen, Chris Webb, Coles Whalen, Braddigan, Kevin Mileski, Rob Drabkin, and Reed Foehl.
“It’s making people more aware of what’s out there, and there’s a really good scene for songwriters here,” Foehl says.
Foehl has toured the country and opened for acts such as Ray LaMontagne, but you can also catch him sometimes in the den-like atmosphere of Jonesy’s EatBar (where Ligon books free shows every Friday night) singing background music for patrons shooting pool and playing board games. For him, it’s a chance to practice and have a few beers while getting paid and fed. For HomeVibe fans, it’s a free front-row ticket to see an amazing artist.
Ligon doesn’t mind forgoing sleep for live music. His biggest challenge is figuring out how to maintain the pin-drop silence of a living room as shows grow to bigger theaters. He hopes the militant shooshers he attracts will keep setting the tone. The test will come June 13 at the third-anniversary concert and live CD release. He’s bringing in a still-to-be-determined marquis national act and a lot of the usual suspects.
Lately, there are more artists who want to play HomeVibe shows than he can accommodate, which has been a welcome problem for a fan like him to have.
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