Jess Williamson comes to town. Texas-born, LA-based singer, songwriter, and multi-instrumentalist, Jess Williamson, will be performing in the barn on Friday, July 19th. Her latest album 'Time Ain’t Accidental' is evocative of iconic Western landscapes, tear-in-beer anthems, and a wholly modern take on country music that is completely her own. You won’t want to miss this legend’s debut in Pine Plains, of course accompanied by some Texas fare. Tickets here.
Country dancing in the barn. Copperhead Meg is making our dreams of a rodeo in the barn come true. She’ll be teaching country swing and line dance and we’ll be throwing a shrimp boil. Tickets here. Bring your boots and appetite.
Wood-fired Summer Camp. We’re throwing an instructional pizza party for kids ages 4-12 on Wednesday, July 10th from 4-6pm. Resident dough master Stephen Shami will do his best to lead the organized chaos and teach the pee-wee generation how to make a classic pie. Pans limited, sign up here.
We’re churning ice cream all summer long. Look out for mint chip (made with wild river mint), coffee toffee crunch, salted malted chocolate and strawberry rhubarb sorbet…
If the apple doesn’t fall far from the tree, it makes perfect sense that Katie Pearce’s unofficial title at Stissing House is ‘resident party animal.’ Officially, she’s our Director of Feasts & Special Projects. Growing up, Katie’s house was known as the town watering hole. “My parents were party animals! When I was a kid, I’d turn the music down and the lights off and tell people to go home–but, as a teenager, I realized roaring laughter and clinking glasses was comforting to me, and hosting parties is kind of all I wanted to do.”
Katie honed her early hosting skills on her parents’ property in an old structure that was, in fact, the original town bar. Built in the early 1900s, the ‘Shack in the Back’ was wild and dirty, covered in wood, and the backdrop for a lot of Johnny Cash on repeat and occasional champagne shower. There were absolutely no rules enforced. “I feel like every party I host should feel a little like the shack days.”
Since then, Katie has intentionally collected over 18 years of hospitality experience. She served weddings at a fancy golf club, decorated her college dorm like an exclusive lounge for hosting friends, earned a degree in food science from UVM, and managed the restaurant at the Tides Beach Club in Maine (all by the age of 22). From Maine, she decamped to San Francisco to pick Dungeness crab and make pasta dough in the basement of a restaurants, worked the busy door at SPQR, and found Wild Kitchen Dinners with ForageSF, a roving pop-up dinner platform (think underground dinners in an abandoned warehouse with no permits). All of this “because I needed to learn all the things, and I needed to learn them right now!” She was lured back to the east coast in 2017 to help open and manage Bartlett House in Ghent, NY. We’re now lucky to call her ours.
The magic of Katie is the sum of these things: You won’t know it, but she’s definitely running the show. She knows how to cook, and understands that food is an integral part of hosting. But she’s not cooking anything before you arrive, and she’ll have it on the table in time. If something isn’t perfect, she calls it rustic and moves on to make something else pop. She expects the unexpected. She loves a party trick. Most importantly, she loves a room full of people–and before you know it, she’ll have you shucking peas, making cocktails or lighting candles. A true sparker of joy.
In her Special Projects role, Katie thoughtfully developed our summer Craft Series which highlights the simple joys of American culture, from music and arts to cooking and slow fashion. There’s still time to join us for one of these special events! Click here for tickets. And read below for a conversation with Katie in which you’ll surely pick up some valuable hosting tips.
(Also, in case you were wondering, the infamous ‘Shack in the Back’ that would often get fired up by anyone in the neighborhood at all hours of the night.)
We don’t want you to give away your secrets, but what would you say are the key ingredients for throwing a great party?
Loaded question, so many things. But first, put on some music and light some candles because setting up a great party requires you personally to be in a good mood. Also the more scenery changes the better, however mellow or wild each of them are, matched with setting a good pace. In the hour leading up, you have to be able to do four things at once and not even think twice about it. Once things get underway during our feasts here, I always make sure someone is ahead of the party (usually me), in the party, and behind the party. I run things a bit like a crew ship you want to be on and I’ve never been able to shake that.
When I host at home, I still do four things at once, but I also add on cooking. I’m usually entertaining my hosting-obsessed friends, so I spend most of my prep time setting up projects for them to help with–peeling shrimp, picking herbs, cutting cucumbers, folding napkins–so we can chat over them as they arrive. I don’t like when parties feel too perfect right when you get there. Have all the ingredients for the cake measured out on the counter, but not yet mixed, baking and smelling incredible until you sit down to feast. Let perfection go and let everyone have a role in an evening's unraveling. Let it get messy, but still feel unabashedly beautiful. Everything truly becomes more memorable and magical for everyone.
You and Clare have a great partnership–can you share more about your collaboration style?
When Clare and I met, I brought her a bowl of strawberries and talked about great and horrible parties for almost two hours. In walking around the building for the first time together, I could tell right away this was the space both of us needed to break some rules, and it was going to be a beast of a project to get it right. Since then, we keep a lot of running lists, learn each other's likes and dislikes, and make sure to talk about the big picture weekly. I think there is also this very important mutual trust between us, that has us both completely unafraid to do something neither one of us has ever done before. Rather than trying to mimic what’s out there, we just create the dreamiest version of the feast at hand. She knows at this point that if the plan is to throw a kids egg hunt, I’m going to get 200 hot cross buns and 10 bales of hay and fill the upstairs barn with it, without thinking twice (or asking). Honestly, I think we both get a thrill out of surprising each other with over the top party tricks and feast decor finds, and it just keeps the collaborative fire burning.
What makes Stissing House such a special place to host a memorable feast?
Stissing House, when it’s in full swing, rocks like a boat. Clare told me that on day one, and since then I always feel it swaying. The wood beams, the low light, seeing a broth cauldron hanging over the fireplace in one of the dining rooms - it’s truly my goal to create a fantasy you never want to leave. I think I’ve always viewed our whole house feasts as an opportunity to give someone else the keys to create their own chaos there. It’s a special place to steward nightly, but we really like sharing its magic.
Tell us about the best party you’ve ever been to:
Hard to think of the best one, so I’ll go with the most fun as of late. In my experience, the greatest parties rely on perfect weather scenarios, and this party happened to be one I was in charge of throwing on the eve of a giant snowstorm. After a season of good and bad holiday parties, my wife wanted a seafood boil RAGER for her birthday on January 4th…which sounded like the most absurd request, but I ran with it. We invited everyone we knew and cooked every seafood imaginable over our fireplace hearth, making all the windows run with sweat and glisten with candlelight. When you opened the doors, steam quite literally rushed out into the cold winter night. We covered our dining room table with seaweed and a big lobster trap filled with flowers, pots of hot butter and metal bowls to toss empty shells. We had no utensils or seating, but we did have a surprise scenery change to ‘Club Lobster Pot’ in our basement that was filled with clear balloons, a zillion more candles, and very loud club music. My wife also changed into a red leather lobster suit (with claws) and the Lobster Party was born. I think people really needed that party, and I also truly thought the cops were going to come.
Since we know you’ve never thrown a terrible party, tell us about a time you attended an party-gone-wrong:
The only party gone horribly wrong are the ones I’ve created and attended in my dreams. Overwhelming waves of guests showing up hours too early, not a candle lit in sight, drinks run dry and you can never catch up! Sometimes I’ll tell clients about them after the fact if we’ve been working on something wild together, and sometimes I don’t (for obvious reasons). But generally I’m having a feast in my dreams before it all goes down, to iron out the kinks.
What’s the craziest thing you ever asked your guests to do?
I asked my friend Jack to move a burning fire into another living room in an old, cold house I lived in. They definitely did it, and then we just continued to do it at every winter party.
How do you approach music for your parties? Favorite genre/playlist of all time?
Totally mood based–but it really matters. My friends know it’s not even a question if I’m bringing my enormous speaker which some have referred to as ‘that thing attached to her arm.’
I admittedly have my friends DJ if there is a need for high energy dance music, but if there is a long dinner party ahead, Dream Puppy by The Sweet Enoughs radio station. More sounds, less words.
The best hospitality advice you’ve ever been given:
Lead with grace. Advice given to me by the hardest working host I know, and the most wonderful friend, Katy Oursler.
In your wildest dreams, tell us about a party you’re going to throw one day.
Easy. We set out to have a big fish feast on an old, wooden ship (basically Stissing turns into a giant boat) to a deserted island. There’s some wind and rain but it’s so hot no one cares- and the seas are also a little rough but not too scary. Candles stay lit. When we hit sand, we swim to shore and party around an enormous bonfire and eat tropical desserts until the sun comes up. In the morning we glide back to shore on calm seas, eat more seafood, and swim in the sunshine. I’m not wrong. Who’s with me?
Plan a Feast with Katie here.
(Lead photo by Autumn Jordan)