It hurts so bad, just trying to keep to myself all the material I want to use in my documentary of the open mics around the world. But I caught a very cool, laid back little jam at the bar last night after the Ptit Bonheur la Chance open mic had formally ended in the basement room, the “cave.” Here it was Thomas Arlo playing Chardes Bourdon’s Epiphone at the guitar with Vincent Barriquand of the band Black Butterfly, sitting at the bar and jamming – and Ollie’s dog coming up at the end. And this just topped off a beautiful night with the final songs of Ollie closing off the show eliciting the remaining spectators to their feet to dance. Another beautiful moment of a beautiful evening.
It was summertime at Ollie’s open mic, which meant as with the previous week, a different crowd. But some of the regulars nevertheless. And the fact there were so many different people in the audience made me relax and feel I could repeat myself a little, so I did “Borderline,” I did “What’s Up!” and then I took the big risk with “A Change is Gonna Come.” I still did not feel I had done a good job of that song, that I seem to perfect only in my living room. But I recieved some good responses on it and was told that I should do it more.
I had, in fact, faced a big challenge on what to play since immediately before I went up there was this guy Elian Dalmasso, who was extremely interesting. He is a Parisian who lives in London and has a band there called “The Burnetts.” It was his birthday or something, and he had a little group of people with him, and he gave us all a very good little concert – so good that I thought I should put up here three of his songs. But that meant that I had to really search for the right thing to follow him with. I chose my songs for both the contrast to his, and what I thought might engage the audience. It worked.