Jared Sears once went door to door looking for spaces to hosts concerts for City Sessions. Now people come to him hoping to have a concert in their living room.

The local concert series is preparing for their fifth annual Home Sweet Home festival “where hospitality and music reside” as the organization heads into its 10th year of creating intimate live music experiences — usually in people’s homes.

This year’s festival will feature more music than ever in 20 different homes and venues in downtown Bentonville with concerts by both local and nationally touring artists April 26-27.

“It’s going to be a lot of fun. We’re expecting over 600 people filtering through all these houses,” says Sears. The festival kicks off with The Bros. Landreth and Abraham Alexander from 6-10 p.m. April 26 at Meteor Guitar Gallery. Then on April 27 there will be more than 50 shows in living rooms and back yards in downtown Bentonville.

Performing smaller intimate shows will be Abby Holliday, Mike Mains & the Branches, Phillip-Michael Scales, Ira Wolf, Bailey Bigger, Tedious & Brief, and FallLift. Local talent will includes Jamie Lou & the Hullabaloo, Smokey & the Mirror, Common Roots, Baang, Auralai, Melody Pond, Ashtyn Barbaree, Jasper Logan, Pura Coco, Dandelion Heart, 3deadidols and more.

Sears says since the festival is happening all day Saturday, concertgoers will head south for a “good old-fashioned street dinner” at 5:30 p.m. at the For The Love food truck location, where they can purchase food and drinks while listening to live music from Sons of Otis Malone.

The festival, he says, has a block party feel and is a cool opportunity to meet your neighbors.

“I love music, but more than anything, I honestly love what music does for our community,” Sears says. “It just allows people to connect with other humans.”

He points out that “there’s just not a lot of shared experiences in the world anymore that aren’t a gathering of people who have like-minded political views or religious views or whatever. Music really breaks down those dividing walls.

“I just think, for our culture and society, it’s just so important to engage people, and there’s no more intimate, vulnerable space to engage people than in a home with music.”

Even though they aren’t coming to anyone’s living room, The Bros. Landreth are also celebrating a 10 year anniversary. Recently they recorded an acoustic version of their debut album, “Let It Lie,” which won the Juno Award for Roots & Traditional Album of the Year in 2015 and launched their career.

“When we put it out, we weren’t expecting it to do anything. But it wound up taking us on on a trip we were not expecting to go on, and people loved it more than we honestly thought anybody would care to,” says Joey Landreth. For the last six months, he says, they have been on tour playing an acoustic set of their first album and then a plugged-in set of their other songs. They are also staring to work on their fifth studio record.

“Come mid-May we’ll be sort of grounding ourselves for sort of eight to 12 months to get a record together and write it and record it and get ready to put it out in the world,” says Landreth.

For their Bentonville show, they won’t be playing “Let It Lie” in its entirety, but fans should expect to hear a little.

“I think we’ll probably try to pull a few songs from from that first record so that we can give folks a little taste of that,” Dave Landreth says. “Maybe we’ll just play them a little quieter.”

Festival passes are $150 for the entire weekend and include complimentary beer, wine and water for the Saturday home shows.

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FAQ

Home Sweet Home

WHAT — The fifth annual music festival features live music from local and nationally touring artists in more than 20 different homes as well as a headlining concert at Meteor Guitar Gallery.

WHEN — 6-10 p.m. April 26 and 2-10:30 p.m. April 27

WHERE — Downtown Bentonville

COST — $150 plus taxes and fees

INFO — citysessions.org, stubs.net