There are perks that come with playing house concerts.

“They were some of the smallest shows we’ve ever played in our lives, but they felt like some of the biggest shows we’d ever played in our lives,” Tim Quirk said about last summer’s Wonderlick tour, which included a show at a house in Youngstown. “They felt more impactful, just the connection felt deeper between us and the songs and us and the crowd and the crowd and the songs. It was just all these connections, and it felt huge.”

That Youngstown show was fun. I have more vivid and enjoyable memories of that performance than many of the concerts I saw last year in bigger and more traditional venues with much higher ticket prices.

But there also are obstacles with that method of touring. Unlike the late ’80s and early ’90s, when Quirk and Jay Blumenfield were in the band Too Much Joy and getting alternative rock radio play with such songs as “Crush Story,” “Donna Everywhere” and “Long Haired Guys from England,” there’s no tour support from a record label and no tour bus. In addition to being the performers, Quirk and Blumenfield are the drivers, the roadies and the tour managers.

And there’s a new wrinkle this time. Quirk and Blumenfield are being shadowed by a two-person documentary crew. During a phone interview about a week into the tour, Quirk said it’s been an adjustment.

“I just had this realization last night, with the help of some wine, I sort of assumed the documentary crew was going to be like two nonsentient cameras that were just pointed at us all the time,” Quirk said.

“But they’re not. They have opinions and desires and needs that sometimes conflict with ours. We want them to be happy and comfortable, but we tour on a budget. There’s 13-hour drives, and the producer was like, ‘Oh, we can stop in Nashville and we can stop in St Louis,’ and we’re like, ‘We’re not stopping anywhere, buddy. We’re not getting into Athens (Ga.) ’til 10 o’clock.’ So they are changing what they observe by observing.

“But we’re embracing that because we love the idea of constantly testing ourselves, mixing it up,” Blumenfield added.

The director reached out to the duo after reading the tour diaries Quirk posted during last year’s run of dates.

“She described it as a combination of self awareness with gaping blind spots,” Blumenfield said. “She wanted to film something that had to do with our friendship, as well as the history of Too Much Joy and Wonderlick, and also her own efforts to create art, because she found our willingness to embarrass ourselves, if that’s what it took, somewhat inspiring.”

They had to get used to having a camera focused on them as they regularly do online searches for mentions of themselves or the band, calculate the number of listeners they’ve picked up on Spotify or get into the kinds of arguments that are common between two people who are both longtime friends and co-workers.

“We gave them instructions at the outset that we’re not going to tell them how to edit it or how to make us look,” Quirk said. “They have complete permission, if we’re acting like fools, they need to make us look like fools.”

Before the current tour started, Wonderlick released its latest CD, “Wonderlick Goes to War.” Many of the songs were written during last year’s tour, and the lead track “Niagra Falls, 1969” was inspired during the drive to Youngstown from Lewiston, N.Y.

Songs written while performing as an acoustic duo didn’t influence how the two approached them in the studio.

“The studio is like a sandbox that we love to play in and experiment,” Blumenfield said. “We don’t ever think about, ‘How is this going to work live?’ We know some of them will never work live, and we’ll be surprised at some of them that we didn’t think would be great, the acoustic versions are actually better that way.”

“I would say most Wonderlick songs are studio creations,” Quirk added. “One thing that the last tour taught us was it doesn’t matter how wild or wooly or wacky something got in the studio, if there’s a solid core there of just chords, melody and lyrics, it can work in a completely different context.”

One element that always come through in Wonderlick’s and Too Much Joy’s music is the insightful, acerbic lyrics, whether it’s commenting on sociopolitical topics, humankind’s capacity for cruelty or pondering the fate of Vinko Bogataj (who will be better known to readers of a certain age as the ski jumper who symbolized the “agony of defeat” in the opening credits of ABC’s “Wide World of Sports”).

Quirk and Blumenfield will be back in Youngstown on Wednesday at a different location from last year. Message Wonderlick through Facebook to see if any tickets are available.

And give “Goes to War” a listen. Quirk and Blumenfield will be checking to see if you do.

Andy Gray is the entertainment editor of Ticket. Write to him at agray@tribtoday.com.