Every Thursday night Main Street Open Mics, Kelly Secret and the Little Market Café host an open mic outdoors in their courtyard. It’s a beautiful space and 7/15 I had the honour of guest-hosting. It was a brutally hot day, humid and gross, and I didn’t know entirely what to expect – but we had a great list and a beautiful night. We were sticky and gritty and overheated, but with the help of some drinks from Little Market Café, some ice cream from next door, and encouragement and Love from Jeni Porter (LMC’s owner, general patron saint of music in Ellicott City) we got through the night. We also webcast Live, though maaaan spinning all the plates to make that happen – I was a little slower than I wanted to be, out of practice, and so there’s some labels missing here and there. However, you can view it here :
Or on Facebook at https://www.facebook.com/watch/live/?v=174002911434301
I haven’t hosted a physical, in-person open mic in 16 months and I’ve NEVER hosted one with a drumkit. Add to that Livestreaming the night in multi-cam, a new environment with a fair number of new-to-me people and I had a LOT of variables. Fortunately I had the support of 4/6 of the band, with Heather and Joey just working so hard to help me out with load-in, load-out – Heather kept the mics clean, Joey played along with people…
It was interesting to really have to drill down on the hygiene thing – wiping down the mics, providing mic covers. I don’t know that THAT many people actually cared (though I had a couple of people arrive in masks) but I think it’s the right thing to do, and beyond that, on-message to be SEEN doing it. I have faith in my vaccine, but we had a couple of kids come up to the mics… I’m a terrible judge of age and I DOUBT they were under 12, but better safe than sorry.
All-in-all I was HORRIBLY aware of being out-of-practice with the whole “race around like a crazy human while running sound and moving mics” and I wasn’t as smoov as I wish I was…. but it DID give me a bit of a hankering to keep hosting the things. Moreso than the VOM, this definitely was on-mission, providing a spot nice enough and interesting enough for higher-level performers not to be bored, not to think it’s BENEATH them (the cachet of “hrm, maybe we could get booked here” never hurts) while also being supportive enough for the beginners… I felt like I was doing my JOB for once.
In addition, I didn’t grab decent pics of everyone, but you ALL LOOKED GREAT!!!
- ilyAIMY
- Tomas Drgon
- Eric Sloan
- Jimmy Stewart
- Maddie and Maggie
- Mya Scott
- Chris Kemp
- Christina Kellogg
- Gino the Bard
- Dave Benham
- From the Dirt
- Steve Hunt
- Joey Jenkins
- Bob Copeland
- Vutvutters
- Steve Cutts
- Beat Willy
- Heather Aubrey Lloyd
Special thanks to Joey Jenkins for providing drums!
Eric Sloan on carbon fiber flute. 
Jimmy Stewart 
pic by Kristen Jones 
Maddie and Maggie 
Mya Scott 
Chris Kemp 
Christina Kellogg 
Gino the Bard 
Dave Benham 
From the Dirt 
joined by Heather and Joey 
Bob Copeland 
Vutvutters 
Steve Cutts 
Steve’s guitar was probably not SUPPOSED to be here – but it WAS picturesque! 
Beat Willy 
Thanks for the effort to put the live stream out there! All of us and remote locations say we love you for doing it! The pictures look great and it was great fun watching y’all
Thank you for hosting! I am still amazed at how awesome every performer was through the course of the night.