Louise Mosrie, Byron Dowd, Grady Yates
House concerts offer the stuff that songwriters thirst for: attentive crowds in great listening rooms. And a house concert offers an audience a chance to mix and mingle with one another, usually over pot-luck snacks, without all the bother of the added noises and crowds in the bars, and to hear musicians presenting their best.
One such concert was held Sunday (March 10) at a newly-constructed house (On the market, by the way, if you are interested!) off Walnut Hill in Dallas. Catered, with some pot-luck from music-goers who are used to adding to the pot, and the grub was fine! And another BTW, this was the first house concert in this new series, to be known as 3 Moons House Concerts.
Organizer Grady Yates, (3 Moons House Concerts and singer/songwriter) also had professional sound brought in, plus videographers, and contracted for valet parking. Seating was available on the ground floor of this three-story (including basement) home, and on the second story above.
Yates brought in two other great musicians for the occasions — Byron Dowd and, from Nashville, Louise Mosrie.
Dowd opened, with two of his band members also there also: Rob Wechsler on fiddle and Cory Carroll on the cajon drum box. Both Dowd and Yates have real jobs they love, and the music, the singing, the songwriting is to them like golf is to others — a passion not to be ignored! Dowd’s lyrics and melodies light up his face as he delivers one self-penned piece of musical artistry after another.
Yates played next, his songs often introduced with historical facts, such as the story behind the title song on his newest CD project “One Thousand Horses.” Then, the songs that followed brought the listener into that Palo Duro Canyon, or other locations, on a full moon. Grady has several accompanists too, including those on mandolin and guitar. There are songwriters and there are wordsmiths, and the second category is where Yates belongs.
Mosrie, who drew part of her crowd from a performance at a previous Wildflower! Festival, also presented some historical-based songs in her divided set. Her sidekick, Anna, accented Louise’s perfect voice with her own harmonies, mandolin, banjo, and guitar. She was traveling back to her Nashville home from SouthXSouthwest in Austin when 3 Moons was fortunate enough to get her for this groundbreaking house concert
To end the evening, Dowd, Yates, and Mosrie, and several of those who also played, finished out with the very sweet and appropriate classic, “Good Night Irene.”