Tim often asks children who visit our home to count the number of steps from the basement to the third floor. The answer varies; partly because there is some confusion about whether or not to count landings and the floor itself, and also because Tim adds to the chaos by teasing, “That’s not the number I came up with. Did one of the steps get away? We better start over.” And so it goes on.

In addition to entertaining young visitors (and of course being generally useful to move from one level to another), the open staircase in our home provides a boost to the acoustics in the front room for house concerts. This was demonstrated by Oliver Craven of The Stray Birds when they were doing a sound check for their December 2012 show. He moved to the stairwell, held the instrument over the open space and gave a few plinks and listened as the notes climbed up and up and out the open door on the third floor.

The Stacks are providing our next house concert on Wednesday, June 19th. We invite you to come and listen to the voices, guitars and fiddle playing of Andy Stack and Tania Elizabeth. We won’t make you count the steps, but you can take advantage of another benefit of the open staircase that I forgot to mention. Seating for the show!