Twin Cities music fans enjoy an array of live-music venues of varying sizes and amenities, but for some, there’s no place like home.

The evidence is largely anecdotal, but there appears to be a rising trend of homeowners opening their residences as informal music venues. These operations still include the formal tasks of booking acts, promoting the shows, and providing accommodations for performers and fans alike.

To get a better understanding of what it’s like to host music at home, The Current reached out to three of these domestic impresarios who generously open their spaces to artists and audiences.

Grand Oak Opry (St. Paul)

“Part of it, for us, we had nothing to do with, and that's the fact that we've got this 225-year-old oak tree in our backyard,” says Sean Kershaw, who, along with his husband Tim Hawkins, hosts concerts at their house in the West Seventh Neighborhood in St. Paul. “That alone creates a really great presence in our yard.”

Launched in 2014, Grand Oak Opry sets the standard for what local backyard concerts can be. The entire concept, however, began humbly for pragmatic reasons. “We had had some experiences where we'd gone to concerts and people had talked over singer-songwriter performers, which was really annoying,” Kershaw recalls. “And we're parents, and we couldn't go to a lot of late shows like we did when we were younger.”

Fortunately, the couple were friends with Dave Boquist, a founding member of the band Son Volt, who also lives in St. Paul. Boquist offered to put together a trio to perform in Kershaw and Hawkins’ backyard, and the event drew about 35 people. At the time, the band Communist Daughter lived just one street over. They asked to perform next. From that point, Grand Oak Opry took root.

In the earlier days of the series, Kershaw and Hawkins reached out to artists. Now, they receive more than 100 applicants each year for their six-show Grand Oak Opry season. “What we try and do in evaluating them is, over a summer, have as many different types of music as we can and make sure that it's a diverse set of performers,” Kershaw explains, “because part of what this does is expose the audience to performers that they may not have heard before.”

Kershaw says he and Hawkins focus on Minnesota artists, although this year’s season kicks off Saturday, June 28, with a performance by Denver-based Cherokee Social.

Something important Kershaw and Hawkins have realized over time is the benefit Grand Oak Opry brings to artists. “All of the contributions from people who attend — there's not a ticket, there's not a required payment, we ask for $15, but people can pay whatever they want — all of that goes to the musicians,” Kershaw says. “I think we're almost to $150,000 now in terms of what the concerts have contributed to the artists who have performed.”

With the exception of proceeds from sales of Grand Oak Opry T-shirts, Kershaw and Hawkins take nothing monetarily as hosts. They do take great pride in what Grand Oak Opry does to bring people together with music. “To have Chastity Brown or Mayyadda perform in your yard, and it sounds phenomenal … it gives you goosebumps,” Kershaw says.

Over time, Kershaw and Hawkins have made improvements to their property to make it even more hospitable to concerts, including a tiny-house addition that serves as a green room for artists. And even though audiences can get big — Brown drew 575 people, as did a concert by Nur-D — Kershaw is invigorated by the embrace of the West Seventh neighborhood. Concerts wrap by 9 p.m., and the amplification is not loud. The concerts have become such a local fixture that the landlord next door screens potential tenants by asking if they’re OK living adjacent to occasional outdoor concerts. “The neighborhood was immediately supportive of this from the very beginning, and we couldn't do it without their support,” Kershaw says.

Perhaps most illustrative of the neighborhood support is the fact Grand Oak Opry relies on volunteers to run the show. The sound engineer is volunteer Josh Anderson, and a veritable company of neighborhood volunteers help with parking, wayfinding, cleanup and general welcome.

“The inclusivity is really important,” Kershaw says, “At the beginning every show, we say, ‘Welcome to St. Paul, welcome to West Seventh, and welcome to our backyard.’ And so that sense of both welcoming for the bands and for the attendees, and a sense of generosity or hospitality is part of what we're trying to achieve.”

Grand Oak Opry has announced its complete 2025 season. That full schedule, along with information for concertgoers and artists, is posted at grandoakopry.com.

The Rock Garden at Andy and Meg’s (Richfield)

The germ of the idea started when Megan Bell Honigman and her husband Andrew Honigman relocated from Minneapolis to the nearby suburb of Richfield. “We moved into our house at the end of 2019, and it has a humongous backyard,” Megan Bell Honigman recalls. “We thought like, ‘Oh, it'd be really great to use this backyard for something other than mowing.’”

Megan is a visual artist, and Andrew is an IT professional who has played in several bands. The idea of doing something artistic, and in particular music, came naturally to them. They were eager to start backyard concerts in the spring of 2020, but the COVID-19 pandemic put the idea on pause. Megan took advantage of the extra time to make some improvements to the space. “Because our yard was basically just a big grass lawn, we needed to kind of up the ‘garden’ part of the equation,” she says. “So I spent the first part of the pandemic building a giant vegetable garden in the backyard, and then got a grant [from Lawns to Legumes] to put in some native gardens. And so our yard is now full of gardens and a whole lot less grass.”

They also converted a circa 1940s basement rec room to a green room for musicians (the renovated space also doubles as a cool hangout for the couple’s teenagers and their friends).

When Megan and Andrew were ready to start hosting concerts in 2022, they reached out to their friend Dylan Hicks, who was happy to get on board — and the series took off from there. Musicians are paid for their performances through at-will donations given the day of the concert. “People are really generous with tips, and all the tips go to the artists,” Megan says, “so they make a good amount of money for working in our backyard for one hour. And I think they have a good time doing it too.”

Booking Hicks provided Megan and Andrew with confidence to reach out to other musicians, and Hicks also spread the word in his circles. “He's played every single year we've done it, you know, this will be our fourth year. John Munson is another person that's played in several bands every year for us as well, and he's also a great community builder.”

For music fans attending a show at The Rock Garden, they can wander down the hill to the backyard and roll out a blanket or plop a chair on the lawn, maybe settling into a spot under the shade of a tree or finding a perch on the giant green Adirondack chair built by local artist Paul Sisson. “You'll be watching the people on stage, and there'll be butterflies flying between them, and the shadows of sunflowers on the on the screen behind them,” Megan says. “It's just a really beautiful setting.”

Megan says all stakeholders — neighbors, concert attendees and the artists themselves — have been overwhelmingly positive in their feedback about concerts at The Rock Garden. The City of Richfield did not require any permits to host concerts, but Megan and Andrew did learn that permits are required to serve food — something they did at their inaugural concert but scaled back to a simple menu of free bottled water and soft drinks. “Maybe if we were having concerts every weekend or inviting thousands of people or something, there probably would be more regulations,” Megan laughs. “Basically, we are just having like a neighborhood get-together three or four times in the summer at midday on a Sunday. So it's just like a little party!”

No concerts have been scheduled yet for 2025 at The Rock Garden at Andy and Meg’s, but Megan Bell Honigman says plans are in the works for September dates. Updates will be posted to The Rock Garden at Andy and Meg’s Facebook page and Instagram account.

Fourteen_43 (St. Paul)

Jodi McDonah saw a need and decided to fill it. She and her husband are big fans of live music, and as the COVID pandemic persisted into 2021, they learned how Boston band Tall Heights were looking to book a backyard tour across the U.S. as venues remained closed. Tall Heights had asked potential hosts to submit a location description and photos. McDonah took a chance and Tall Heights ended up selecting her St. Paul home as its Twin Cities venue. “Afterwards, I’m just like, ‘That was so much fun!’,” McDonah recalls. “We should do this again and continue to do it.”

With that, the venue known as Fourteen_43 was born. McDonah and her husband have hosted a steady stream of backyard concerts from mid-May to October. They’ve since added an indoor, house-concert schedule that spans October to mid-May. In just a few short years, the McDonahs have welcomed a series of touring acts, including Nashville’s Alice Wallace, Nebraska’s The Wildwoods, Milwaukee’s Trapper Schoepp, and a string of Colorado artists including Zach Heckendorf, Covenhoven, Megan Burtt, and LVDY (pronounced “lady”). The McDonahs also host numerous local artists, having booked Chris Koza, Katy Vernon, Eli Gardiner, and Maygen and the Birdwatcher.

As McDonah tells it, the combined work of Mother Nature and the late-19th and early-20th century builders of their neighborhood — coupled with a supportive next-door neighbor — all coalesced to make their home a good spot for outdoor concerts: The adjacent backyards are wide with a terraced slope. “The way I describe it is that it’s kind of like this natural amphitheater,” McDonah says, adding that the space could accommodate about 250 people, although their largest attendance to date has numbered approximately 120.

Although McDonah does not provide PA, artists find a welcoming space to perform, and for touring acts, free overnight accommodations. “We always try to provide them at least one meal,” McDonah explains, “then after that, I’m like, ‘OK, you’re kind of on your own: please just go in the fridge, here’s our snack closet, you have to help yourself.’”

Payment for artists varies. McDonah says most of the time it’s a suggested $20 donation, all of which goes to the artists. There have been occasions when artists have asked for concert attendees to RSVP with Venmo payment, and McDonah will post herself at the gate and check people off a list.

McDonah says she has received no negative feedback as a result of hosting concerts, noting that she is selective of the acts she books. “I always tell artists, ‘Since we are right in the city, heavy metal is out.’ We would never have a super loud band back there.”

And McDonah has enjoyed the experience of welcoming music fans into her home. She’ll even leave little signs inside the house to help visitors find the bathroom should they need it. “We have people coming that we've actually never met, and that's totally fine,” McDonah says. “I've kind of learned that people coming to live music are, generally speaking, great and good people. So, you know, we don't mind that at all.”

Concerts at Jodi McDonah’s St. Paul house are announced on the Fourteen_43 Instagram page. Those who RSVP are then provided the venue address via DM.

Other places hosting backyard concerts

Here are a few other spots in the region hosting concerts at homes. Because these are private residences, the specific location is not provided to prospective concertgoers until an RSVP has been sent to the hosts.

Arbordale Music Series – Minnetonka, Minn.

Capybara Lounge – St. Louis Park, Minn.

The Greenhouse – Lakeville, Minn.

The Mess — Minneapolis

Rieder Homestead Concerts – Delano, Minn.