The new open mic is awesome. Sleet is not. The second night of the new open mic might suck. But for right now I’m optimistic. Last night the Teavolve open mic was also strong, bolstered in part by a massive influx of Java Mammas friends including Jonny Kush, Kyndal G. and Dylan Lee Brady along with their various + 1s. We also had a friend visiting from Connecticut and a good deal of turnout for my featured artist NOMAD.
It was especially striking last night, the fact that through my open mics I’ve known some of these people for many years – I’ve seen some of them grow grey hairs, some have kids, marriages and divorces. The photos from my open mics actually document vast, formative swaths of their Lives. That sort of struck me hard as I was thinking about how many pictures I’d taken over the course of the night…
And yet I can’t imagine they really care! I’m not saying that in a bad way, I’m just realizing that the moment my open mic was inconvenient, most of the community that had formed around it dissolved. No-one looks at the videos or cares that I take so many photographs. No one needs the recordings. It’s sort of like my own form of hording…
I was looking at freeing up space on my hard drives the other night and really shyed away from deleting open mics from 2006, 2007… things that I haven’t played since they were recorded, things that no-one needs and no-one cares about. I think I truly need to start making a clean sweep of things like that. I put so much time and effort into the preservation of these things, but for no real purpose. I think these recordings are so cool, and yet I don’t go back and listen to them either.
DeJohn
I can delete them. I can REALLY delete them!
Probably.
In any case – the new open mic at Old Bowie Town Grille was really marvelous. I took 200 photos and have 7 gigabytes of audio from the night. There are EQ issues with the room that fill me with angst but, like my storage of audio from years past, no-one else cares about… we had a fantastic birthday party in the house that provided a massive jolt of fun for the evening ( and a vocalist as well ). Kristen’s other act Lulu’s Fate came out to perform for the first time in their new format, I met a couple of new faces and re-encountered a couple that I hadn’t seen in a long, long, long time.
The night looks promising though it’s going to be a struggle to take it out of the “white guys with guitars” realm. The owner thinks it can’t be done. I’m hoping to buck that expectation.
For the evening of February 7th, 2013 Heather and Kristen and I hosted my Edith May’s Paradise open mic. I had cake and cheesecake and birthday songs sung sexily. Life was very, very good. For my birthday Kristen took me to get mussels and beer. I’m not a beer guy but the mussels sure were exquisite. We met up with my brother at a fantastic bar in Washington DC and consumed mussels in tequila, mussels in creamy broths and mussels in limes. Life was good. Afterwards we headed over to the 9:30 Club to catch the Punch Brothers! SORT of for my birthday but also because it was just awesome – Kristen took me to see Chris Theile’s Punch Brothers at the 9:30 Club – I’d actually managed to leave my driver’s license at home and was getting really, really nervous about getting in. Fortunately I used to Lvie with the door guy and he was like “yup, he’s cool”. It’s like I’m famous! It was a sold out show at the 9:30 Club. The Punch Brothers were absolutely marvelous – and totally deserving of the adoration – but man I would’ve killed to be their opening act.
Derrick Credito. QueenEarth Vinnie Valerio QueenEarth featuring at my Teavolve open mic in Baltimore, MD – February 11th, 2013 joined by Quenton and Janice B. T’was a wonderful night and getting to see Quenton just do his thing playing lead was a lot of fun.. Dan Zimmerman Cecilia Grace
