There are five Russian collector plates atop the mantelpiece of the fireplace behind the "stage" in Jeff Hanson's living room. They are the only precious personal items he doesn't squirrel away when he presents a house concert for about 50 friends and strangers.

His co-host, Neal Copperman, says the plates are pretty safe sitting behind the singer/songwriter types who have passed through to do 100 shows in the house-concert series the past seven years.

"You have to really be going nuts to knock things off the top shelf," Copperman noted.

And even though the headliners on this night are called the Band of Heathens, they turn out to be five friendly guys from Austin who set toes tapping with their sound that recalls the Band and the Grateful Dead.

As the band wraps up its sound check, all is calm as Hanson and Copperman greet guests and put out food before the final show in their AMP Concerts series earlier this month.

Hanson arranges a tray of bright, colorful vegetables. Early arrivals admire his dessert dish: a mango-peach-raspberry trifle, featuring ladyfingers and Cool Whip, with slivered almonds on top.

House concert die-hard Chuck Banks arrives with cakes from a bakery in Las Cruces, one of the unofficial sponsors.

Will Hanson miss the monthly invasion of bands, fans and PA systems?

"I won't miss moving my furniture once a month," he says.

Then again . . .

"I'm worried now that I won't be motivated to clean."

House concerts have cropped up around the country in the past decade as an alternative to smoky bars, chatterbox coffeehouses and other generic venues.

Music aficionados tap into a network of musicians - mostly singer/songwriters and avant garde performers - spread the word and open up their homes to 30 to 70 fans. There's little overhead, performers make a decent buck, and fans get to see fringe acts in an intimate setting.

AMP did it monthly at Hanson's house in a gated community just down the road west of Old Town. Copperman, who used the Bosque house concerts to launch a career as a promoter, is letting Hanson off the hook and moving the series Downtown to the Windchime Gallery.

Daniel Boling has been doing house concerts nearly as long but not as often in the Northeast Heights.

There's an occasional series in Ridgecrest in the Southeast Heights.

The Sandia Heights Homeowners Association is building a folk series in the basement hall at the Church of the Good Shepherd.

Boling hosted his first show in the Northeast Heights in fall 2001, and as a performer he has performed at house concerts in Texas and the Midwest.

"Being a folk singer myself and doing some traveling and festivals, I became aware of the phenomenon and did a little checking and found out you just needed a space and folks who want to come and a performer who wants to perform," Boling said.

Shows ask for a donation of about $10 to $15, and in most set-ups all the money goes straight to the performers. The hosts do it for the love of the music, usually, and for the kick of having a hip act perform live in their living room.

Artists that put the AMP series on the map include indie heavyweights Eliza Gilkyson, Lynn Miles and Victoria Williams. The concerts also introduced Albuquerque to artists like the Wailin' Jennys, Rachael Sage and the Boulder Acoustic Society. Copperman brought in Prince Diabaté‚ from Guinea, Druha Trava from the Czech Republic and French chanteuses Marianne Dissard and Emilie Marchand (all the way from Tucson).

"This was a kind of music we liked - singer/songwriter, folky, acoustic," Copperman explained. "And they would only play here sporadically."

Some of the big names Boling has hosted include Willis Alan Ramsey, known for his one and only (but influential) album, a self-titled effort in 1972, and more recently for penning songs for Lyle Lovett and Shawn Colvin. He also wrote the Õ70s hit "Muskrat Love."

And singer/songwriter Jack Williams has played the Boling series five times, most recently in June with Ronny Cox, the actor.

AMP jumped out of the gate with seven shows in 2000 at Copperman's house in the University Area.

"The next (eighth) show we had, seven people show up," Hanson said. "It was kind of embarrassing."

The series then moved to Hanson's house, where he sets up about 40 chairs, two couches and three stools at the kitchen bar.

Anna Wolfe was living in Albuquerque when she was recruited for the very first house concert in the AMP series. She used to play with the Hounds of Carlisle and now plies her trade in Nashville.

"House concerts are really terrific, because they give you an intimate setting and are almost always very supportive for the artists," Wolfe said. "The people are doing it for the love of the music. They're not doing it to get rich. . . . It winds up being a wholesome and wonderful experience for everybody."

Chuck Banks works with Hanson at Honeywell and attended nearly every one of the 100 shows.

"I got exposed to music I wouldn't typically listen to," Banks said at the final gathering.

Joe Lovato also works with Hanson and was a regular at the AMP series. The concept was foreign to him at first.

"I heard an interview (with a band) on KUNM," Lovato recalled. "I thought, `Wow. This person's playing a house concert. What's a house concert?'

"I told Jeff, `Have you heard about this?' And he said, `Oh, yeah. That's at my house.' "

Banks pointed to bands like the Red Stick Ramblers out of Los Angeles as examples of how his musical world has been expanded beyond traditional rock and blues.

"I wasn't into folk and Americana music," Banks said. "I hadn't been exposed to it. I've since gotten a better appreciation of it."

Lovato likes the intimate setting - the chance to hear a band warm up or the opportunity to mingle with band members after their set.

"You learn about a person when they're a few feet away from you and talking to you," Lovato added. "As opposed to speaking to a crowd. You feel like they're talking to you."

Boling, who has been on both ends of that equation, agrees.

"Everyone gets a very similar experience compared with a traditional venue where the performer's experience is staring into lights and blackness and basically having to perform in a vacuum," he said. "As opposed to a house concert, at least at ours, where, if you move around a lot, you're going to touch someone in the front row."

He added: "It's more like a conversation than a concert. It's more of an interchange."

Santa Fe singer/songwriter Laurianne Fiorentino calls it a "communal experience" and a swap of energy from the performer to the audience and back to the performer.

"I call it a loop," she said.

Fiorentino has done house concerts from Cambridge, Mass., to Los Angeles, and Pecos in between. She has recorded an album in the Santuario de Guadalupe in Santa Fe. She played AMP concert No. 6.

"It was really lovely," she said. "It's nice to play to a concert audience rather than a pub or coffeehouse audience.

"It seems like the crowds that come are appreciative to be at a small public gathering that's not in a public venue. They seem to be receptive and thoughtful, kind people."

And it often beats the alternative, she said.

"Either you're in a club and you have to cover the cost of overhead, or you're in a coffee shop with a blender and cash registers going," Fiorentino said.

House concerts can be lucrative for the performer, between the cash collected at the door and money made from CD sales.

"You have the opportunity to make money, because the money goes to the artist," Fiorentino said. "And there's not the pressure of the venue looking at the cash register at the end of the night. But you do have to get the word out and have people show up."

"Often bands can make more money here than at any other venue in town," Copperman said. At a Downtown club, for example, "if they pull in a couple hundred bucks you're doing well. A house concert can get you three to six hundred bucks."

House concerts often are on weekday evenings, which allows performers to fill in dates between bigger gigs.

Boling said that some musicians now forsake traditional venues and tour exclusively from house to house.

"If you're a full-time travelin' musician who's working hard, that's a decent living," he said.

But Wolfe, AMP's inaugural performer, said the growing popularity of house concerts is creating a bit of a scramble among musicians.

"The only challenge with house concerts is getting them," Wolfe said. "Artists like them so much . . . the word's out, and there are some artists out there who do whole tours just doing house concerts. . . . There's an awful lot of competition."

And then there's the issue of neighborliness. These shows take place in residential area. Do the neighbors complain much?

Hanson and Copperman say it hasn't been an issue.

"Every once in while there's been an unhappy neighbor," Copperman said, "but usually they've moved. It's always the worry of a house concert series."

No permits are required, they said.

"It's pretty much just a party," Copperman said. "It's more or less a private party. We don't advertise the concert. You have to contact us to get in.

"It's kind of a potluck."

What do the folks on Boling's block in the Northeast Heights think of him opening his house to a music jam every other month?

"Well, most of them are at the concert," he said.

He laughs. "Rule No. 1: Invite your neighbors."

Boling and his wife even put up the performers for the night.

While the hosts don't make money, they tend to look at the events as a labor of love and an excuse to have fun and create a community of like-minded music lovers.

As Copperman put it: "We throw a party. We spend 50 or 60 bucks. We have a good time. Everyone enjoys themselves."

"And I get a free concert," Hanson adds.

Performer Fiorentino said there's also the hipness factor of being on the A-list: "People feel like they're in on some secret little thing. They're one of the fortunate few who got in the door."

At the final AMP house concert, Band of Heathens plowed through songs like "Judas 'Scariot Blues," "Girl From Manitoba" and "One More Step to the Promised Land." The three frontmen were on top of the crowd, so close a fan could easily reach out and strum a guitar.

"This is the second time we've played Albuquerque," band member Colin Brooks said between songs. "The last time was a punk rock club."

That drew laughs from the audience.

"I think we were a little too diverse for them."

After a tight first set, they took a break to sell CDs. After the show, the band was planning to take the gate - probably about $600 collected in a Mr. Potato Head bucket - and drive straight back to Austin.

And Copperman and Hanson closed the book on seven years of opening their houses to a variety of folks around town.

Copperman said it has been an experiment in trust: "People say, `Aren't you worried about having strange people in your house? They could just take all your stuff.' "

"I've never had a problem," Hanson interjected.

"People seem pretty cool," Copperman said.

Even so, the series seemed to come to a natural end. Hanson said he couldn't commit to bookings three to six months in advance anymore.

It seemed like a natural break.

"The thrill for me is not what it used to be," Hanson admitted. "It's not that it's gone . . ."

Copperman jumps in: "It's not quite as novel that there's going to be a performer in your living room tonight."

And the vibe will live on at AMP's new Downtown venue.

"It'll have the same style of booking as we've had at the house," Copperman promised.

"And, as with the beauty of the house concert scene, probably somebody else will pop up."