The last several days have been rewarding in the way that being a teacher can be rewarding – and in a way that it so rarely is : being thanked by people you’re trying to help isn’t really the usual way.
Monday and Tuesday, running my open mics for the first time in several weeks, it’s usually a pretty thankless job and you only hear the comments from those who complain that slots of too short of that I’m censoring them or that they don’t like the sound. Whatever – only squeaky wheels get grease but only broken wheels squeak, right?
In any case, Monday just felt like people were… they were glad I was back. I’d done some writing for one of my regulars and his comment that “now I want to BE that guy!” means I wrote something that, though I regard it to be true in every respect, he found inspirational. It was one of those nights where we had a number of first timers mixed with people who’d been first-timers not so long ago – people who’d actually been inspired to come back – mixed with pros and at least one legitimate local legend. The surprise appearance by none other than 89 year old Warner Williams was just flattering!
A great open mic night Monday night – Teavolve was home to lots of new people and plenty familiar. Above and left to right : Isabel Stone brought me a rarity : songs on autoharp! Alfonso mixed it up with songs in Spanish and English and just a stunning falsetto. And then of course Jimmy Stewart has long been a favourite. I wrote up his bio this week for press releases and other nefarious purposes.
My featured artists had me in a good mood too : though my cynical self is tired of the name “The Honey Badgers” (the moniker for myriad folk and acoustic acts) I was really happy to host Erin and Michael both at Teavolve and again at Busboys and Poets because ten years ago I was right where they were.
Last week they left their dayjobs, Monday morning they left home – and here they are. A married couple from Delaware, Michael JUST celebrated his 30th (31st?) birthday – they’ve got a lot of bright-eyed optimism and have the stink of The Dream upon them – and I was all too happy to make sure that their first two gigs Lived up to that dream with good audiences, good rooms, a good time.
Dave Benham playing with his huge flute. The marvelous Jon Patton. Warner Williams!
And they were appreciative. And the audiences were appreciative. And the regulars helped coil cables at the end of the night. And I didn’t get too much syrup on my pants from my chicken and waffles.
A beautiful Gibson LG-0 from about the same year as me. An old tenor guitar that looks like the neck once came off… and then got stuck back on.
Before heading to my Busboys and Poets open mic I stopped by House of Musical Traditions to see what cool stuff was in the shop. Above were two of my current favourites.
I don’t know, in general – Monday and Tuesday made me feel like I was being successful in the community-minded part of things that I try to do. Teavolve’s talking about restarting weekend music, the Takoma Park Folk Festival’s got a slightly lower application rate but the quality is AWESOME. I’ve got two new songs that we worked on with the band at practice yesterday.
Jay Keating caught Kristen and I in action at Busboys and Poets. … and I caught the Honey Badgers PRE action… Good to see Kirsten Stade and her mbira in action again! The Honey Badgers. And Know1Else. Wow. So – I was annoyed because first we couldn’t download our track because our track was on youtube, then we realized our fancy-ass iPhone didn’t have an output so Kristen stepped forward with HER phone – but holy crap, it was all worth it. Malachi Mack’s voice was…
… INSANE.
It sucks that I woke up this morning feeling depressed and useless, because I have empirical evidence that I shouldn’t be and I’m not. Maybe I stayed up too late with Sharif drinking whisky and chatting about societal ills. Maybe I stayed up too late after that drinking whisky and watching cartoons. Maybe I stayed up too late because I drank too much whisky and couldn’t sleep and not sleeping makes me feel depressed and useless. I wish I could inject a little Monday Tuesday into my Wednesday Thursday!
