Live from Daryl Hall's House

I came across an interesting site while looking for something else on Wikipedia....

 

Daryl Hall, of Hall & Oates fame, has had a hobby of restoring historic homes here in the US and in England.  Down in Dutchess County, he restored two houses and moved them from separate locations to one property.  These houses were built in 1771 and 1780 and have been joined together by a common room that Hall now uses to perform with friends for a monthly webcast.  The site is http://www.livefromdarylshouse.com and the streaming content is free.  You can download the content for a fee as mp3 or iPod friendly video.  It's worth watching just hear his older stuff reinterpreted by guest artists.  And it's not just his material, I got a big kick watching him sing "Cruel to be Kind" with Nick Lowe.

 

I'm not huge Hall & Oates fan, but they had some really good songs back in the 70'a and he can still hit the notes.  I really liked Hall's Sacred Songs solo CD from 1980 more than I like the duo's music.  I'm not a big fan of watching musical performances on the computer, but this is good stuff.

 

The interesting thing is Hall is paying the all of the costs out of his own pocket.  He's going straight to the consumer without involving any record company.  Of course, the more popular his site gets, the bigger his bill will be for the bandwidth costs.  The production quality is very good, that can't be cheap.  I hope than he can make enough money from the on-line sales to keep doing new shows.  Since he's his own publisher, he can do as many or as few webcasts that he wants.  That's one of the cool things about this format, he has no obligation to perform on any arbitrary schedule.  That should keep the shows fresh.