Oof. Last night was… interesting… I adore my open mics, but some nights they DO test me.
I had a fabulous featured artist. I even had a great time. Most of the night ran smoothly and my featured artist was dazzling. I’d last seen Alex Culbreth as part of the duo the Parlor Soldiers. He was indie, he was exciting, he was fun and vibrant and I was excited to see his new project The Dead Country Stars. If anything the instrumentation and energy of Alex Culbreth and the Dead Country Stars was even MORE exciting and I LOVED his “folk rap song” that he wrapped the night with.
We had a couple of new faces, a lot of return customers. We had the regulars in the form of IO and Dan Zimmerman, Vinnie Valerio and of course ilyAIMY. We even had some long-lost old friends in the form of Dan Houtz of Ashes To Embers.
But there was about 15 minutes of tension, angst, and the sense of despair that comes with things kiiiind of going to Hell.
Honestly, I don’t have anyone to blame but myself. Rowan had guest-hosted for me last week while Heather and I were playing at 49 West in Annapolis and had texted me about a teenaged punk band popping into the open mic. He told them “no kits” – but you know, they’d come all this way and they can pare it down and they’ll play really quiet, etc etc.
Well… they didn’t.
Alex Culbreth and the Dead Country Stars Dan Zimmerman and the Great Outdoor Fight. Koye Berry. Derrick Credito.
And they came back THIS week. I gave them the benefit of the doubt. They’d seen the space now, they were apologetic, they’d brought a pile of amps and drums but after we chatted all but one amplifier (which would get DIed into my PA) and 3 pieces of the kit went back in the dad’s car… AND their dad was there! They were late on the list and we chatted about how we’d make it work over the course of the night and even Rowan felt they deserved a second chance.
Ah, more the fool I. Drummer completely out of control, the children were bitchy and whiny about not being able to hear themselves and about how their distortion didn’t sound right*. The girl who headed up the group and had complained about me not knowing she was in the band (sorry, when I asked who was in the band I guess she was too busy being sullen to say anything?) had to hand her guitar to one of the boys to have them tune it… once they were on stage (tuning on stage? Cardinal sin!!!) – the drummer then went on to kick over a mic stand and squirrel around on the floor screaming into a mic.
Sigh. I know, I know, I’m just an old fogey who can’t appreciate the antics of youth, but they were disrespectful of the space, lied about how they’d treat it, could’ve damaged gear. The parent was deeply apologetic, embarrassed and promised to speak with them on the drive home (and even offered to replace anything damaged) … I didn’t get a chance to get angsty at them myself – I’m stunned at how fast they loaded out. No – really – I’ve NEVER seen a band break down and scarper this fast. I think the entire kit, amplifier, guitars, cases and kids had vanished in under a hundred and twenty seconds. – with some gear being TOSSED over the balcony (I’ll have to go back to the video and watch to see if my memory is getting all hyperbolic on me)
Ugh. Anywho – I wish them well. But they’ve got to learn about appropriateness of space, and I’VE got to stick to my guns. No, really – no kits. I wish them upon the Brass Monkey. And perhaps I wish the Brass Monkey upon them.
*The amplifier wasn’t the problem, but it could’ve been. I took direct outs out of what was roughly a Fender Twin (which can be a monstrously loud amp). I’d laid out a power strip with a switch accessible to me so I could shut down the amp if I needed to and then we plugged the guitars in to the amp. I noticed that it wasn’t applying distortion properly but chalked it up to the fact that they really didn’t seem to know what they were doing – I wasn’t going to go through the solving of tech issues over this act so I applied some thick distortion through the board, braced myself and let them have their remaining seven minutes – anywho, as they broke down I realized what the issue was: They hadn’t plugged the amplifier in.
