July 15th, 2021. An open air open mic.

Setting up – pic from Kristen Jones. Little Market Cafe has truly created an oasis in the midst of a hot, difficult summer.

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.

ilyAIMY kicking off the night. It was so hot I sweated my fingerpicks off and was HORRIBLY sloppy, but we got there (actually I guess this is from the soundcheck since Kristen rolled in before we started!)

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.

Tomas Drgon kicking off the LIST – and making Joey work in 5!

In addition, I didn’t grab decent pics of everyone, but you ALL LOOKED GREAT!!!

  1. ilyAIMY
  2. Tomas Drgon
  3. Eric Sloan
  4. Jimmy Stewart
  5. Maddie and Maggie
  6. Mya Scott
  7. Chris Kemp
  8. Christina Kellogg
  9. Gino the Bard
  10. Dave Benham
  11. From the Dirt
  12. Steve Hunt
  13. Joey Jenkins
  14. Bob Copeland
  15. Vutvutters
  16. Steve Cutts
  17. Beat Willy
  18. Heather Aubrey Lloyd

Special thanks to Joey Jenkins for providing drums!

2 thoughts on “July 15th, 2021. An open air open mic.

  1. susan says:

    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

    Reply
  2. Willy says:

    Thank you for hosting! I am still amazed at how awesome every performer was through the course of the night.

    Reply

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *