Time waits for no one, and things are stacking up, and today was tax day in France. So just a few words and some videos to mark my territory on a great night at the Highlander open mic last night!!! Anyway, super long posts get monotonous, no doubt….
I got to the Highlander late-ish but got to play at a reasonable time. I met up there with some old friends and new, like Salt Petal from the night before – and they were even better at the Highlander than at the Ptit Bonheur. And my bonheur was that after I played “Year of the Cat” as an opener, someone from the audience asked if I knew anything by the Righteous Brothers, so I jumped right into “Unchained Melody” instead of Cat’s in the Cradle. I finished with Borderline, just to show it to Salt Petal.
I would estimate that 98 percent of the time I go to the Ptit Bonheur la Chance open mic in Paris near the Pantheon on the rue Laplace on Tuesday nights I end up having a great evening of music and socializing. It happened again last night. The evening started slowly with not that many people there when I arrived at around 9:30. I was afraid I would be too late for the list, to perform, but I was lucky and signed up. Then the place began to fill up with musicians and spectators, and the musical aspect of the evening was great – with a respectful audience that listened and sang along (not to mine) – and then afterwards there was a long period of socializing in the bar, meeting new and interesting people – a great time.
One of the big differences at this open mic is that it is a place where people go into the small cellar to listen to the musicians, and they stay up in the bar to talk. The musicians tend to be very good, young and original, and the audience tends to be about the same. I go so often that I was not sure what to sing, but decided to do “I Won’t Back Down” and my new one, “Crazy Lady.” I did not think of these as crowd pleasers, but I did think of them as songs I wanted to sing. That seemed to please the crowd, which pleased me even more.
I was then even more delighted to meet afterwards someone from a band from California who approached me and said they found the open mic thanks to this blog and its list of open mics and jams in Paris. This was Autumn Harrison of the band Salt Petal. Autumn, who plays accordion and sings, later gave me their CD, and it is quite good – with my favorite song being the very sort of retro-pop song called “Travel Far.” That one sounds almost like something written by Buddy Holly.
My last night in Monaco was the grande finale to the grand prix weekend, and I had been looking forward to it immensely, as I have had such great times at McCarthy’s Irish Pub in Monaco in the last two years, and after Jaspa invited me to come along to do a little jam during her gig, I was ready for another great time. And had it!
I was actually dead tired from a long day, a lot of work, a lot of travel, bad weather, and a lot of walk through Monaco. I then had an excellent meal with a Monaco specialty and I was not so sure I’d make it through the musical part of the night.
Then I met some Formula One people at the pub, then Jaspa came and immediately welcomed me and then she started playing with her percussionist and wonderful guitar player. Then she invited me up quickly, and by then I was all pumped up. I was also slightly left adrift as to what to play, as she did “Mad World,” which I had planned!!! So I did what else? “What’s Up!” and “Wicked Game.” Yeah, repetition of the same thing over again, but it seemed to the best stuff to play with the band and in the pub where the crowd was not too big, but big enough to want to feed with popular, well known songs.
I ended up leaving pretty early, at 1 AM…. But listening to Jaspa and the band, and taking in the warm environment of this bona fide Irish pub – with some Irish bartenders – was a great way to end the weekend.
I arrived at the Bar de la Degustation in Nice just in time to see and record what would be the last song in some kind of open jam, open not just to musicians, but open to the public in the streets of Nice on the public square. I was asked by someone if I wanted to play, I said, Yes, I went up to the mic and someone else started unplugging and told me it was finished. I ended up being much luckier at Paddy’s Pub, where I had seen a near riot take place the night before….
Having just missed the chance at this curious bar with its wide open front and terrace being bigger than the interior of the bar, I decided to check out the other bars. I found one that had a couple of musicians and I chatted with one of the managers at the door, and he was interested in hearing me play, but clearly with a band doing a gig it was out of the question.
So I went down the street to again visit Paddy’s Pub. I could see immediately that the crowd and the vibe and the band were all different from the night before. It was quieter, but still far from tame. It was a lively evening, in fact, with a good crowd, and this duo of musicians on stage, with two guitars and vocals provided mostly by one of the musicians, but occasionally they worked in harmony.
I pulled up to the bar, listened to the band, and found I liked it. After their set, the main guitar player came up to his girlfriend who was standing beside me, and we struck up a conversation. I learned that they were two of a four piece band called Pin Heads, that they were from Nice, and the most surprising thing for me to learn was that the lead singer had only started playing guitar and singing last year!!! I mean, he sounded so good after one year at that, that I wonder what he can do from here.
Anyway, as we spoke, I told the musician about my musical adventures. So he asked if I wanted to go up and play a song or two, and I agreed. We all three of us went up, I did “Mad World,” and “Wicked Game,” AGAIN! And they played along with me. It was pretty loud, the sound system was not what you would call great, but I felt a captive audience and I enjoyed myself immensely.
The secret to a venue is always the people therein….
I had nothing planned for a place to play in Nice last night and decided to just walk around and check out some venues I still had not visited. I passed some street dancers and made a short video of them, then I went on to the old town to see if I could get lucky like I did on my first night. Not quite.
Instead, I ended up dropping in to Paddy’s Pub where I played last year – but probably on the Thursday night – and find a complete madhouse. I mean, this was so crazy that I don’t think I’ve ever seen anything quite like it. The people were dancing on the bar practically, and on the tables, the chairs, the stage – all over the place. The musician was almost an afterthought as the people shouted out in heat and who knows what all around him.
So I felt a little sorry for Simeon Lenoir, the Musical One Man Show, as he calls himself. But at the same time as the crowd went apeshit, they also expressed to him their love of his music and thanks for driving them wild. I stayed for a half pint of Kilkenny and returned to my hotel. Hoping for better times to come in the next two nights on the Cote d’Azur….
When I first started this musical adventure in 2009, I had written off Monaco as an impossible place to play, and settled for Nice. Too chic, too much money, too many pre-planned events during a Grand Prix weekend for there to be anywhere for a gypsy singer player like me to show up and inherit the mic. In the last couple of years I managed to play at McCarthy’s Pub in Monaco, and last night I managed to add a new location, thanks to Pete Cogavin, the lead singer and guitar player for the band Pete and Folks. This was, guess what, a pre-planned gig for Pete and his band in a chic place called Capocaccia, but Pete being the same cool cat he was at Shapko last year invited me to play a couple of songs.
So there I was in this chic joint where you buy a drink and get a free, all-you-can-eat buffet to go with the drink, a garden terrace, a front bar and back room, and the fast moving, bopping music of Pete and Folks, which was a mixture of their own songs and well-known cover songs. I met Pete on his Pete and Friends night at the Shapko bar last year, and he let me go up and play a few songs there. I enjoyed his music there, but he was mostly solo at the time. Hearing him with his band is another experience. Pete has a fabulous voice, and the keyboard player – Marcus Sylvan – sometimes looks like he studied at the Harpo Marx school of mad piano playing. Loved it!
I can see why the band – keyboards, bass, drums and Pete – have been stirring up interest in France, and not only in the South. They also played on the great French television show for live music called Taratata, although I did not speak to Pete about that – I just learned about it on the Pete and Folks band web site today. They just released a CD, as well, and you can hear some of the cool songs from that on the band site. Oh, by the way, Pete is Irish, not French.
So they played their great music and during the break I got to go up and play Pete’s quite amazing Epiphone guitar, which looked pretty vintage. It is a copy of my Gibson J-200, but some of the J-200s are really great guitars, and this was one of them. I decided to play a couple of cover songs, “What’s Up!” and “Father and Son.” And the Capocaccia manager or owner or whoever it was, gave me a free glass of wine after that, so I’m assuming it went well!
But it is a great thrill to play in Monaco – and I’m hoping to do it again before the weekend is finished….
Fishing around for places to play in Nice, I was always going to try out the amazing Shapko bar on the rue Rossetti. And last night, I was in the presence of my friend Baptiste W. Hamon, the inimitable French redneck hillbilly singer songwriter, and it turned out that the theme of the music at Shapko was fairly close to redneck, so I thought Baptiste and I should make a visit.
We had also been considering going to King’s Pub again, where I had played the night before and was invited to play again last night. But I really wanted to take another look at Shapko, where I managed to play some songs last year during a similar acoustic night, hosted by someone else – Peter Cogavin. Peter, in fact, told me yesterday that he knew the guy hosting the evening at Shapko, and that he thought he might be open to letting me play.
That guy was a British musician with the somewhat bourbon soaked hillbilly name of Jack Daniel. It is his real name. And he plays a wicked fingerpicking blues and country guitar and lays a nice laid back vocal on top of it. He had a harmonica player, and then his “friends,” who joined in as the even progressed.
Shapko, the man who owns the bar, is a saxophone player from Russia, and he is a real mean sax player. I mean good, not nasty. He is also a music-loving performer who opens his stage to other players as much as he can while maintaining a good professional business and show. I was really flattered when I walked in last night and he immediately remembered me, although I had visited his bar only twice last year: ‘The Canadian!” he said.
At the break, I spoke to Jack Daniel about the possibility of playing, and he more or less accepted. But as the evening went on with the second set, it became clear that the music was moving further and further away from what either I or Baptiste do, so we ultimately decided to cut out and check out the scene at the King’s Pub. It turned out that that was pretty quiet and the musicians were doing a long set, and we ultimately decided that it was getting too late to hang around much longer. So we both left and went our ways.
But the night was really enriching in terms of the music at Shapko, which was fabulous – especially in the middle of the jam during the second set.
I never expected to do a nearly 1-hour set in a bar in old Nice last night. In fact, I wasn’t even sure I’d find any place to play the whole time I am here until next Monday. But I stumbled on the King’s Pub, noticed they hold an open mic sometimes on Thursdays and Sundays, went in, asked when the next open mic was, got told it would be in nearly two weeks, looked disappointed, got offered to go on stage then and there to play. So I went up, never got asked to get down!
I could not believe my good fortune, but it had to do with the mindset of Christian, the manager of this rock, pop, folk venue in Nice, a mainstay of the live music scene. I had arrived in Nice at dinner time, had to finish doing three articles for my Monaco Grand Prix preview, worked until nearly 10 PM, ran out and found a restaurant, ate, then decided to digest my food by walking around Old Nice checking out the various venues to see if I could plan for playing somewhere later on the trip.
But I had my guitar with me, as always, and the vibe passed with Christian, and the stage was already set up with the equipment of the musician for last night, Matthieu Saque, who was just as open and willing as was Christian to allow me to go on stage and play.
The sound system was great, the monitor was perfectly set up, and later in my set – which lasted 45 minutes to an hour – Matthieu came up and pointed out that I could also use the vocal mixer button to give my voice a bit of harmony.
All in all, it was a superb evening, a great way to digest my food – truffle pasta, confit de canard and baba au rhum, plus a good local red wine – and to discover this very cool bar, the music of Matthieu and Christian and his group. Because it turns out that Christian, the manager, has a band called The Running Birds, that plays at the pub sometimes – he is also doing a different duo thing tonight and tomorrow at the pub – and they are opening up the show this Saturday at the Nikaia for The Scorpions.
Can anything be much cooler than that for a first night in Nice where I expected nothing and inherited the world? The audience was appreciative, and kept asking me to play, so you cannot feel any better while playing than having that happen.
Last night I was hoping to do three different venues, two for my playing, one for watching someone else. Only managed the first two I had planned. But managed to create a third venue along the way….
The first stop was my return to the Blanchisserie open mic, the new open mic I mentioned a few weeks ago, at the art gallery and performance space in Boulogne-Billancourt. In addition to being a really original location for an open mic, both in terms of it situation next to Paris and by its art gallery and loft-like feel, the Blanchisserie has decided to use the concept of having a featured band before the open mic. And in very intelligent manner, the feature lasts only 30 to 45 minutes.
Last night the group, a duo called John and Betty – not their real names – had a very cool sound, lovely harmonies and some great musicianship on the guitar. Very fresh and original. It set the stage for me, as I had opted to go up first; but they were so good that I began to regret my choice. Then I thought, no, they were a great couple with harmonies, lovely bouncing melodious music. The only way I could respond, I thought, was to do something completely different from my previous time at the open mic with Félix on guitar, and something very singer-songwriterly. So I decided to do my new song, “Crazy Lady,” with fairly quiet fingerpicking, and my slightly older one, “Borderline,” to pick up the tempo a little more before ending off with the foot-stomping cover, “What’s Up!”
I had the feeling it worked out O.K. Then Spencer went up after me and his stuff is totally different to mine. So it seemed to all work out.
There were not as many acts as the last time I was there, but we heard some good stuff, and then I left with my friend Adam, who had come with me last time, to go off to see a burlesque show of Louise de Ville at Le Klub. This is the woman I mentioned a few weeks ago as well, who did her one woman show. This show last night was nothing like that one, it being this time pure burlesque.
But on the way to Le Klub, I decided to pull out my guitar and sing a few songs for Adam and his two friends, as they had all arrived too late at the Blanchisserie to hear my set. (Adam caught the end of my last song.) So I ended up singing four or five songs on the Metro. There, I was able to totally let loose – but the you never realize how loud the metro is until you try playing music in it – and felt that whatever may happen later in the evening, I’d had a good fix of performing…..
In fact, the Klub event lasted a little too long for me to go to The Mazet, as I had intended, so I ended my night there, making a fairly early return home, in fact.
Well, it was not quite the monumental evening of the Cavern the night before,
O.K., so I’m sitting there at a table beside the stage at the Cavern club in Paris last night at the open vocal jam session after I played at the Highlander, when up comes this perfect woman who sits down at the table opposite me. She has a perfect face, perfect lips, her eyes are covered with glasses, but I guess the eyes are perfect too – and I can only imagine she has a perfect body as well. So I had to talk to her, right? I mean, there was a little potential awkwardness because she had not sat down at my table because of me, but because of a friend of hers, another woman, from Quebec, with whom I had spoken a little before the perfect woman arrived.
“Do you sing too?” I ask, as her Quebecoise friend sang, and was very good.
“Yes,” she said.
“Are you going to sing tonight?”
“Maybe.”
Not one to know much about making moves, I make my moves slowly, carefully; but nothing will stop me.
“So, what do you do, I mean, do you perform?”
“Yes, I play guitar and sing.”
“Oh, me too. Are you mostly a singer or a guitar player?”
“Mostly the singing.”
I won’t give more details of the conversation, but let’s put it this way. We spoke, she told me her name was Sarah, and I learned that she was working on her singing and performing career, she was tempted to sing on the stage last night, but was not sure what to do. Moreover, she seemed pretty nervous about it. She did not want to go immediately after the break – during which time we had been speaking – and really was not so sure what she could do.
When the break ended, Guillaume, the bass player of the house band, asked if she wanted to go up. She said not just then, and looked very nervous. A little later, please….
So the house band played a song. Then Guillaume asked for another singer, no one presented themselves, and he saw me at the table and knew I had performed there a few times and asked if I wanted to sing. I DID! But I had been also discussing with Sarah about how I found it really difficult to sing with a band without my guitar in my hands, and I had not much experience doing that and that it was really like karaoke and you had to do the songs just the way they were normally done, without much room for interpretation – or free flowing personal whatever….
But I wanted to sing to finally break through my incessant failures at the Cavern. And I kind of wanted to show Sarah and her friend that I could sing! After all, I had just come from the Highlander where I had done three songs different to what I usually do there – “Unchained Melody,” my “Except Her Heart” and Cat Stevens’ “Father and Son,” and it had gone over wonderfully. I was still basking in my success but ready for the blow of failure at the Cavern.
So I got on stage and did “Wicked Game,” and it was pretty much a fuck up from beginning to end. Oh, it was better than the last few times. But I still did not let loose, get into the musical groove and do what I am capable of doing with my own guitar in my hands. It feels like riding a bicycle with no handlebars to hold onto – of course, I do that on my unicycle, but it’s not the same…. Anyway, so fresh from my latest failure – and noticing during the song that neither the perfect Sarah nor her Quebecoise friend had actually listened to me, I rejoin them at the table.
It takes several minutes, but finally the Quebecoise and then Sarah, say of my performance, “Oh, that was good.”
I say to Sarah, “No Sarah, it was not good. It was nothing. Really, you KNOW when you have flattened your audience, knocked them onto the floor, killed them,” – and I might have added, You know yourself when you have reached the emotional pitch you are capable of, the flow. And you know when you are putting the audience to sleep, and singing “outside” the song. “That,” I say, “was putting them to sleep. It was not good.”
She looked at me with her eyes intent perhaps for the first time. We left it at that, and after a few other performers did their thing, Guillaume got Sarah up on the stage. He said to her that she had better go now – because she was still shy about it – because otherwise people suddenly all wanted to play at the same time at the end of the night and there was no more time.
So up goes Sarah, and she still had not decided what song to do until she was right on the stage, looking at the blue book of lyrics. Then she says, “Creep.” And I’m thinking, how is this perfect young quiet and shy girl going to pull that one off.
She starts out real slow, quiet, but I hear a beautiful and interesting quality to her voice. And then slowly, bit by bit, perfect Sarah explodes vocally and physically on stage. She is brilliant. The best of the night. I am entirely subjugated, hypnotized, as I realize that Sarah has a perfect voice too. Sarah has a truth and and edge to her voice. For a moment as she is singing, I’m saying, hmm, behind the light softness of this perfect girl there is a Nina Hagen boiling inside too. No, she is not a Creep. But that perfect body and all of that stuff that she calls out for in the song, well, it’s there. That bit about not belonging? She DOES belong there.
And so after she comes of stage and rejoins me at the table, I take a few minutes to calm down, then I say, “You see, YOU killed me! Destroyed me.”
She thanks me, and a few minutes later, when the Quebecoise goes up to sing, I turn to Sarah again and I say, “There is no competition here in this, but you were by far, far, far the best one here tonight.”
“Thanks!”
“Yes, but you know that,” I added.
“No,” she said sitting back and smiling.
I tell her I have a blog and would like to put up the video, and I give her my card with the blog address. Then I ask if she has a myspace I can link to. So she gives it.
I’m so totally destroyed that I leave for the evening in the middle of the Quebecoise’s song, and tell Sarah to say goodbye for me.
I get home and I look on the Internet for Sarah’s myspace and I discover that this quiet, shy, nervous and wildly talented singer was a star of X-Factor, that Sarah is now playing in Sister Act in the Theatre Mogador in Paris, that she is indeed a young singer starting out, but that she already not surprisingly has a history of success and subjugation. Just take a look at the crying judge on X-Factor when she does the Adele song. The man obviously had the same reaction as I did.
But more importantly for me, I know nothing about this and may be wrong, but I think that participants in things like X-Factor, the Voice and all those other music reality shows, probably end up having a hard time shaking the reputations they get on those shows of sugary, middle-of the road teen idol kinds of singing and have a hard time breaking out of that mold into something with more of an edge and truth to it.
I saw clearly that Sarah has that edge lying beneath the perfect everything. She just is not a creep, that’s all. She did not tell me anything about her TV stardom, her role in Sister Act, she was just another musician trying to make her career. And knowing full well I wanted to use the video on my blog, she had no objections – as more and more rising performers I have met do for fear of hurting their “careers.” This was REAL. (Too bad I was sitting in the shadows beside the stage without a good perspective for my camera either for the sound or image, but it still shows and allows for a hearing of enough to know it was a great performance, growing better as it progressed.)
Anyway. My apologies for the outpouring, but it was very cool, and my own failure faded into the background. But I must learn how to sing with a band without my guitar, for God’s sakes! Or for Sarah’s sake!
