When you show up at the door of the Whitehaus, you won’t find anyone there to X your hands or see your ID, you won’t find anyone there looking to charge you a 7 dollar convenience fee and, if it wasn’t already obvious, you won’t find Barack Obama. But you might find someone like Morgan Shaker who, despite never meeting you before, will let you in, offer you a beer, and start chatting with you about bands and upcoming events that he and his buddies are planning. Morgan is one of the founding members of The Whitehaus Family Record, headquartered in an actual white house nestled nicely in the depths of Jamaica Plain, which now has about 25 bands recording under their label. The Whitehaus looks like a three-story art-project situated in the suburbs and it is home to some of Boston’s most creative artistic talent, while hosting up to three or four events a week.

Started in the fall of 2006, the original vision of was to be an open community of musical minds where artists could come and share their talents in what they call a Hootenanny. When describing the typical Hootenanny, Shaker told me, “If you play any form of music, you could just come in and play for about 15 or twenty minutes. They would usually go from about 10 at night to about 4 in the morning and we would do that every Friday night.”

After about 2 and a half years of weekly Hootenannys, the open community aspect still held true, but they began to record some of these artists under the Whitehaus name and host shows even more frequently. Today, Whitehaus represents nationally recognized bands such as Truman Peyote and the Woodrow Wilsons, but still possesses the same humility and openness that they were built on.

On Tuesday, February 9th, an event called UnStandard made its way to the living room of the Whitehaus. In typical Whitehaus fashion, each act on the bill had a 15 or 20 minute set. Anna Miller, curator of the event, described the focus of the night as “different artists sharing different ideas” by showcasing not only musical acts, but poetry and visual arts as well. Highlights from the night included powerful, song-like poetry from U-Meleni Mhlaba, the French Cops (Shaker’s newest project with his Whitehaus cohorts), inspired folk songs by Daniel Radin of The Novel Ideas, and South Carolina’s The Opposite of Train, whose experimental compositions made use of instruments that included a red toy keyboard, with a silent, wintry film from Bill Carson playing in the background.

So people live in this place? Yeah. Shaker is one of many who actually reside in the house, and he tells me that events like this take place “just about every other calendar day.” The lack of sleep and the occasional noise complaint seem to be a fair trade-off for the artistic experiences and the contributions the Whitehaus is able to make to the local music scene and to its inhabitants’ lives. One can tell by the artwork that fills the walls, the vinyl on rotation, and the instruments and notebooks scattered about the mantles and dining room tables that these guys are dedicated. They’re also proud to see many of their buddies touring nationally and extending the Whitehaus attitude to other DIY venues around the country.

At this point, the Whitehaus Family Record has over 50 CD releases under their belt and they are about to drop their first two vinyl releases. On top of events held at the Whitehaus, the Family Record has a residency every Wednesday night at the Alchemist Lounge in Jamaica Plain and will be hosting their third annual Blastfest at the Central Square YMCA on March 3rd, which will feature about 20 acts including Many Mansions and Manners. For more on Whitehaus artists and a calendar of upcoming events, visit the Whitehaus Family Record’s website at www.whitehausfamilyrecord.com.

–Perry Eaton