After a year-long hiatus, the Friends House Concerts series has come back to life this fall.

This weekend will see singer-songwriter Peter Mulvey return to the Upper Skyway-neighborhood house that has held more than 50 concerts during the past eight years.

“I like being close to an audience,” Mulvey said. “I play a lot of small coffeehouses, places where you could toss a tennis ball to the furthest person away from you.”

The concerts are held in the generous home of Marc and Whitney Luckett.

“It’s really just for the love of live music in the house, and it’s for the artists,” Whitney Luckett said. “I’m not a music promoter. We spend money on every show.”

House concerts are a cross between a conventional show and a party with friends. Fans bring wine, beer and hors d’oeuvres, break bread together, and listen to the concert. Every cent of the ticket price goes to the artist, which can mean a fairly lucrative night.

“It works out for everyone because we cherish the music and it’s usually a really good night for them,” Luckett said.

That formula doesn’t work as well when the economy plummets and tickets don’t sell.

Some regulars were heartsick when the most prominent house concerts in Colorado Springs stopped in November 2008, due to the Lucketts’ other personal commitments and weak ticket sales.

“It hurt for a while,” said Biff Morehead. He and wife Patti came to a show in 2006 and got hooked. “It’s so intimate, and you aren’t fighting people who aren’t interested in the music. It’s a personal kind of thing.”

Mulvey agreed. And he thinks that makes house concerts a perfect venue for his music.

“It’s meant to be listened to. It’s not background music,” said the Milwaukee-based Mulvey, who specializes in intriguing lyrics and intricate guitar work. “You have to engage with it in order to get something out if it.”

Whitney Luckett said the re-formed concert series will be less ambitious in quantity, but not quality of artists.

She’s cutting back from 10 concerts a year to about five; she’s avoiding summer concerts because so many free concert series fill the city in the warm months; and she’s capping attendance at the house so it’s less crowded.

“It seems to me the music scene (locally) has changed a lot on the past eight years, and there’s a lot more available now,” she said. “Summer concerts don’t make any sense. Free concerts draw away, especially in tough economic times.”

Biff and Patti Morehead are just happy the concerts are back.

Their favorite memory was when they were tapped to drive Christine Lavin to Denver after her show at the house.

They popped in her CD on the drive and she narrated, giving them the background and inspiration behind the songs.

For music fans, it was a dream come true, and an example of the personal exchange that makes house concerts so inviting. 

Who: Peter Mulvey in concert, with Carsie Blanton

Where: Friends House Concerts

When: 7:30 p.m. Saturday, Dec. 12

Tickets: $20

More info: Call 329.1644 or go to http://www.house-concerts.org/index2.asp

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Photo by PHOTO BY CLAUDIA VALDEZ