What’s the Mill House?
It’s a private house in Werrington, Peterborough, owned by Mike and Anne Whitaker, both of whom are musical. The old shop it’s attached to has lovely acoustics, and room for a duo or trio and about 20 audience.
How do the house concerts work?
In a nutshell, we invite people we’d like to hear, or think other folks would. There’s room for about 20-30 folks tops in the audience, and we generally give friends of ours and the artists first dibs before we throw the doors open. However, all is not lost, as we also. when we can, stream the concert live on the Internet, and archive it for posterity (given the artist’s permission).
This being our house, the kettle is permanently on, and we’ll lay on some munchies. Do feel free to bring a small snack contribution or your own teabags if you like or need.
How much does it cost?
It depends. For some events (if the band have a set fee, usually) we will set a ticket price. Otherwise, at the venue, we pass the (Anne’s very lovely cowboy) hat: suggested donation is £10, or £5 unwaged, but in general, what you can afford, and don’t forget to leave yourself some money for the artist’s CDs and merchandise! If you’re listening online, we’ll usually broadcast a PayPal link, and again, a similar donation is suggested but not mandatory. Really what we’re aiming to do is make sure the artists don’t get home out of pocket, and any extra gets shared between them and keeping our tech working.
What’s filk?
You just had to ask 😀 Filk is the folk music of the science fiction fan community. A lot of our musical friends have ties there, and it provides a rich pool of surprisingly talented people we can draw on. Not that that’s going to restrict us any!