On his tour of North America's living rooms, David Bazan will bring his organic acoustic sound to Muncie.
On Tuesday, Bazan, who formed the once-famed indie-rock band Pedro the Lion, will perform at an undisclosed living room in the city of Muncie, en route to a full-blown tour ending on Sept. 23 in Oregon.
Bazan is no stranger to playing in living rooms. In fact, he started touring in this fashion back in 2009, before the release of "Curse Your Branches." Having been around music for a large portion of his life, Bazan has in turn been apart of the house-show culture for some time now.
"I played a lot of house shows when I was a kid, and we had a lot of house shows at the house that I lived at too," he said. "There is something about the unofficial, DIY quality of it that really turns me on, and it did then as well."
After deciding to tackle a tour of living rooms in 2009, Bazan and manager Bob Andrews began looking into houses that would be open to hosting these events across the country.
Bazan and Andrews came across a database of "email addresses and numbers" that welcomed house shows across the country, but quickly realized they would have to do a little more digging if they wanted to make a full-blown tour out of the idea.
"Bob looked at a couple of those and realized that that wasn't really going to work for us because those folks that put on house shows as a regular thing do it Friday and Saturday nights only, once a month for artists that they're really turned on by," Bazan said.
So instead, the two decided to seek out houses to host Bazan, on their own. Andrews said the first time they tried this touring style, it was rather hit-or-miss; however, the two quickly picked up on aspects of a house that were conducive to Bazan's style. For examples, high ceilings and hardwood floors are especially appealing.
In hopes of making the tour more welcoming to all ages, they changed the title to "Living Room Tour," as opposed to "House Show Tour," as the typical association with "house shows" is a younger, solely college crowd.
"If dudes send photos of their dirty basement with laundry on the floor and a bunch of empty beer cans, I just skip over those," Andrews said. "We're trying to make an experience for the other 40 people coming to the show, too."
Andrews spoke of one particularly successful show in Brooklyn, N.Y., at which his expectations were exceeded greatly.
"They played this place in Brooklyn that had to be a multi-million dollar apartment, in this really fancy building that overlooked Manhattan," Andrews said. "It was cool because people were coming to this really nice place."
When planning these tours, the initial skeleton is derived from a route that Bazan sees fit; however, as is the spirit of the DIY, living room performance routine, this route is open to alteration if an opportunity arises.
"We do tend to choose the routing pretty deliberately," Bazan said. "So maybe if we are looking for a show in Indianapolis for instance, and somebody says, 'I live in Muncie, I'd like to do a show,' then we'll alter our original plan."
After he is finished with this tour, Bazan will join a full band that will be performing Pedro the Lion tracks. The tour will be in support of the re-release of its studio albums on vinyl and will last from Nov. 1 through Dec. 15. On this tour of primarily clubs, the band will play the album "Control" in its entirety.
But until then, Bazan will continue on with his tour of living rooms, all the while soaking in the unique vibrations that these shows have to offer.
"There is an intimacy at the house shows that can be pretty electric when everything is going right, and more often than not, it does go right," he said.
For more information on Bazan and his future touring plans, check out davidbazan.com.
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