ilyĀIMY

(yep, no sound for the first 20 minutes of the webcast or so, sigh – but I WAS AWESOME!!!)

Tonight was a beautiful night. Annette was on point, but beyond that, we had an all-star turnout of regulars and old friends and ONE person who I thought was new but who actually I’d seen before playing a different instrument. The Silver Strings were back and they were spectacularly tight, Islesman did something new, Dan Schramm did something new, Dave DuGoff did something new – and in general most everyone was in top form. Even *I* was impressed with my own performance, though you’ll never know because I had the wrong audio input selected for the stream for the beginning of the night.

Alas, imperfect beauty.

I won’t complain. I even had someone who incautiously leaned up against the light switches as if to commemorate my late Dad’s birthday.

At Musikfest this weekend a guy came up to me – a distantly familiar face that I thought I knew from my old Java Mamma’s open mics, and I was right! He came up and said that he wanted to hug me and thank me because the open mics taught him a whole other path about community and music and what it was POSSIBLE to do with his Life. He gave me credit for pointing the way to what he does now and that… well, that’s a pretty good reason for doing what I do.

But the warm fuzzies from last night will keep me from giving in to their cynicism for a LITTLE while longer. There’s been so much REAL bad news and difficulty, it seems like the ultimate of pettiness to feel the need to hang out at an open mic just to tell the host how pathetic they are.

1. rob
2. Patrick Smith
3. Vicki and Tom
4. DC
5. Alan
6. Phil BC
7. Bob and Andre
8. ‘Round Women
9. Silver Strings
10. Annette Wasilik and Brad
11. Dan Schramm
12. Joseph Isaacs
13. Clifton
14. John
15. Pugliese
16. Deb B
17. Eeshan
18. Eli J
19. Dave DuGoff
20. Jim Barry
21. Islesman
22. &Maddie
23. Sid Satellite