February 10th, 2020. Jeffrey T Smith at Teavolve.

What a fantastic night. It doesn’t hurt that we had some pros in the room, and frankly, when other venues drop the ball it is often *I* and all o’ Teavolve that reap the profits! (thank you to Gentle Temper for dropping in, I know it doesn’t make up for a dropped booking, but it was awesome to finally meet y’all).

A massive, beautiful list. A whale of a list. Beached and glistening for all to see. Insert a “dynamite” joke. Terrible metaphor, but damn, things were on fire!

Special thanks to our featured artist Jeff Smith for coming out and lending us some cool fingerpicking and a bit of a traditional bluesy sound for the night, something we don’t get enough of at Teavolve. All-in-all, excellent pop tunes, people doing their first open mic, people doing their thousandth gig, a broad run and kind of everything I want an open mic to be.

Plus I had the chicken and waffles. Everything’s better when you have the chicken and waffles.

Jeff Smith

Very rarely do I book people I haven’t seen in the wild, but Jeff Smith was a beautiful exception to a lot of my almost-not-quite-rules. A solo singer/songwriter coming up from Virginia, I really enjoyed his off-beat sense of humour and the fact that he wore pants.

This wasn’t always a sure thing.

Great finger picking, great songs, great raspy, nuanced voice. I Love the man’s HAIR. He gets compliments from Chris Smithers, and now he gets compliments from me – I just wish I could’ve imported a big wooden floor for him to stomp on.

Featured artists are made possible through donations by our in-house audience and Focus Music – www.focusmusic.org.

Video at : https://youtu.be/F3AKoy58HVY

Gallery at : http://www.ilyaimy.com/wordpress/?p=16751

The Teavolve Café & Lounge open mic happens just about every Monday at Teavolve, signup at 6pm, performances from 7-10pm. 2 songs / 10 minutes whichever’s shorter, with a PG13 environment – and is hosted by rob Hinkal of the band ilyAIMY. Rob’s Open Mics were declared a National Open Mic by Shure Microphones, “Best of DC” from Dcmusicdownload.com and have received recognition from the Library of Congress. Search “rob’s open mics” for more info.