Liberty Hall is quiet, considering how much activity is happening on the stage.

Four stagehands and a production assistant from Lawrence’s House of Blues help carry in gear as their supervisor makes the rounds, coordinating a half dozen other matters via cell phone.

Jacki Becker, production director for Lawrence's House of Blues, orders lunch for her crew while it sets up for a show at Liberty Hall. HOB is a nationally renowned booking agency.

For this event, Canadian musician Rufus Wainwright is scheduled to bring his theatrical pop to the historic venue. And while the singer eats lunch at nearby Paradise Cafe, his road crew and the House of Blues staff are preparing for the night’s performance. A piano is tuned, road cases shuffled, microphones arranged and a call is being made to determine if the band can get its laundry cleaned before the show.

“Any place we can do music, we’re going to do it,” said Jacki Becker, production director for Lawrence’s House of Blues.

Putting on a medium-scale concert like Wainwright’s involves a myriad of decisions, some crucial and some banal. And Becker and the others from HOB are quite used to it.

The nationally renowned booking agency runs much of its Midwest operations through its offices appropriately a converted house at 912 Tenn. And not surprisingly, the Lawrence music scene benefits greatly from having the business based in the college town.

Since there is no actual House of Blues venue in Kansas, the company utilizes a variety of different clubs and stages to host the concerts it brings to the area. (This is a somewhat atypical approach, because HOBs in most major cities usually book just one specific venue.) Currently, the local outlet handles musical engagements for its parent company in six Midwestern states.

While many bars book a sizable percentage of their own shows, a company such as this offers certain advantages to performers and club owners.

“Someone can make a call to us, and we’re basically a spider web,” Becker said. “And we say, ‘We can do your band in Kansas City, St. Louis, Lincoln, Wichita, Des Moines. It’s less complicated to call one person you trust that you know is going to have this staff with the heart and love of music to take care of your artists. It frees up the club then to focus on making sure their toilets flush and to have the best drink specials possible.”

Lawrence is by far the smallest city to accommodate an HOB. The reason for its existence is because veteran Lawrence promoter Jeff Fortier recently sold/franchised his respected Avalanche Productions to the corporation in January 2001. Even though the name changed, Fortier and the former Avalanche staff still run the Lawrence enterprise albeit with input from the home office.

Despite some speculation to the contrary, HOB has no plans of relocating.

“We may open a satellite office in Kansas City,” Becker said. “But Jeff and I both love the scene here very much and have no intention of moving.”

Last year, HOB put on more than 400 shows. A third of these were held in downtown Lawrence. For Becker, there’s no great mystery why the music scene continues to thrive in this town.

“Our community is in four blocks,” she explained. “You come here usually for college and you fall in and out of love with the city, the shops, the restaurants. Somehow music ties in with all of that. We’ve got record stores, clubs, the paper, KJHK, a recording studio there’s something within this tiny little space for a musician to record their CD, put out their CD, perform live. And it’s all within about four blocks. Where else can you get that?”