I’ve been talking about the open mics not being quite the same as usual in Paris now that it is the middle of the summer. But last night, Ollie’s open mic at the Ptit Bonheur La Chance defied the trend and was full right from the beginning. And there were lots of the cool regular acts and a few of the newer ones and some completely new. I did a number of videos, as usual, played my songs, had fun. But now my back is right up against the wall with preparations for my trip to Germany starting tomorrow, so I have for once not really got time for words. But as per usual, Ollie’s place robs me of words anyway. So take in the videos below, and if a picture tells a thousand words – or sells a thousand words – let’s hope a video tells a million!
After a couple of slow weeks for me at my two favorite Monday night haunts in Paris, the Tennessee Bar and Galway Pub open mics fired up my imagination and fed my own musical needs quite well last night. It was uncharacteristically quiet for a while at the Tennessee because of the summer holidays, but it was as busy as usual at the Galway. The Tennessee open mic became very interesting with the music of Kensuke Shoji, a violin player from Tokyo who plays some mean bluegrass as well as other interesting stuff. In fact, the high point there was certainly when Jesse Kincaid of the New Rising Sons invited Kensuke up on the stage to play with him while he did some of his songs.
Prior to that Jesse made my own night there and later at the Galway as well, when he played harmonica and lead guitar with me on some of my songs. But we were all blown away by Tony, the 88-year-old vaudeville-like performer from England who occasionally shows up at the Paris open mics. He did his usual guitar bits, his pianos stuff and his harmonica number. Tony is a consummate showman, old time. But he never fails to get people laughing and enjoying his abilities and dreaming about if we will ourselves be so bold and active as to do the same at his age – if we even make it that far.
This really is what open mics are all about: The scene was set in the “Be There” bar last night on Paris’s Ile St. Louis as I arrived after 9:30 PM, and the only person in the bar was the bartender manager owner guy. Great, I thought. I better drink a half a pint and go on over to the Caveau des Oubliettes for the blues jam. But while I got to drinking the half pint, in walked a middle-aged man with a guitar in his hand, with no case for the guitar. What then worked out was the whole reason one should never take a look at an open mic and say, “No one here? It’s a lost cause.”
The guy, whose name was Jesse, went up and played. So here we were, this guy Jesse, the bartender and me. And as I listened, I thought, hmm, this guy can play. He has the licks. His classical guitar had no pickup, and it was mic’d in. Turned out in the beginning, his voice had no mic, but I didn’t notice the difference because it carried. Anyway, I’m listening to the stuff, filming the stuff, and thinking, this is cool. I like this feel. An old Elvis song or something, and some stuff I don’t recognize, and some nice finger picking.
So Jesse plays four songs, then I go up. I play four songs, two of my own and two cover songs. I noticed that by now this guy Jesse had been joined by two women, and another man had entered the bar. Anyway, I finish my songs and Jesse comes up and asks if we can play together. Absolutely, I said, and thought this is even more cool. So I suggest “Crazy Love” by Van Morrison, and he knows it note for note, plays lead and sings along in the chorus. Then I do “Father and Son” and he plays along. Then I do one of my own, “Since You Left Me,” and he plays along beautifully with the lead. And I’m thinking, the man knows his chops! Who is this guy?
So then he plays more and I go and talk to one of the women he was with, who turns out to be his beautiful daughter. I learn that they are just visiting Paris, they are staying in an apartment on the Ile St. Louis – near the open mic – and that he had seen the sign outside the bar announcing the open mic, and that he had also noticed the guitar in his apartment. No case, no nothing, no great shakes of a guitar. So he took the guitar and did the open mic.
Well, after he plays, I decide to probe a little, because I had said to myself, “This guy has something of the professional musician about him. Something in the ease of what and how he is doing it.” So it turns out when I ask him that, guess what? He IS a professional musician, his band is called the New Rising Sons, and that he was a founding member of the band the Rising Sons, his name being Jesse Kincaid. They were founded in 1964, did an album for Columbia Records that was not immediately released, but was released many years later. That two of the original members of the band were Ry Cooder and Taj Mahal. Holy shit! Now is that not the coolest open mic experience you can imagine? Ok, ONE of the coolest? And I am very seriously pleased that I did not know who he was BEFORE we played together or before I sang my songs….
So anyway, as I said, don’t cut out on those empty open mics – you might find a pearl somewhere during the evening if you hang around and play anyway.
On the way there, by the way, I recorded this cool Kubrick sort of moment as I walked out of the metro:
Mapplethorpe's famous album cover photo of Smith, and the two together.
Not much music lately for me, just drying out from adventures bold and brave and probably stupid. But it has a been a great time and moment to finish reading “Just Kids,” the memoir of her life with Robert Mapplethorpe written by Patti Smith. This is an exceptional memoir, I loved it from beginning to end. In the mid-70s when I first heard Patti Smith, I was so taken aback that I incorporated a satirical imitation of her in my efforts at a comedy routine at Yuk Yuk’s in Toronto when it was still in a church basement. Although I was trying to make fun of her howling, sexually wired vocal acrobatics as they sounded so weird to me I think I was probably just jealous of her talent. (I also did a similarly jealousy-inspired short line routine to the tune of Dylan’s Blowin’ in the Wind: “How many songs must I write, before I make a million bucks….”)
Since then, Yuk Yuk’s has become a nation-wide chain of comedy clubs, I have grown up a little and Patti Smith has become an important voice of her generation not only as an amazing singer/poet, but also as a memoir writer. This book tells the story of her life in conjunction with that of her early lover, Robert Mapplethorpe, who became a famous photographer and who died of AIDS in 1989. The book is not just beautifully written, sincerely written, poetically written, but it paints a surprising and magnificently human portrait of both herself and Mapplethorpe. I bought the book on a whim as I bought up a few other rock ‘n roll biographies and memoirs – Dylan’s “Chronicles” and Keith Richards’ “Life” – and following my great experience reading Anthony Kiedis’s memoir. I loved the latter, loved the Dylan, have found the Richards so heavy going that I have ceased reading it, but will no doubt pick it up again as I have been encouraged by several friends to do so.
But this Patti Smith one was simply dazzling. Not only from a writerly point of view, but also in how it shows the development of the parallel careers of her and Mapplethorpe, how it shows the complexity of the relationship with this man who ended up discovering he was mainly into men, how she was often mistakenly taken for being into women and drugs but was actually a very down-to-earth and fairly straight girl. I love how both her career and that of Mapplethorpe are shown to have grown so organically and from no real preconceived vision of how things should be or what they really wanted to do in life, other than a general artistic leaning. And the book paints a superb picture of the era and the transition from the 1960s rock to the 1970s punk and new wave scene – CBGB’s and all that – that she traversed. I had no idea she had lived in the Chelsea Hotel and could count among her friends and mentors well before she became a rock star people like Allan Ginsberg, Gregory Corso, Janice Joplin, and what? Sam Shepard! (The latter a former lover.) Not to mention her time in the world of Max’s Kansas City on the Andy Warhol periphery.
Just Kids, by Patti Smith
Extraordinarily well written, and honest and sincere, this story never drags. And it shows a life well lived, and changes entirely my early perception of Patti Smith. I didn’t have a clue. Funny enough, if you listen to her voice again after reading this and after not having listened to her sing for many years, you might be struck, as I was, by what a fabulous voice and singing talent she really was – and which aspect she barely touches on here.
A few days ago I put up an item about the open mic at the Harcourt Arms in Oxford with some of my videos of it. It turns out that Nigel Brown, the organizer, also took some videos, including me doing my Harry Chapin song, “Cat’s in the Cradle.” Rather than putting them up on my previous post, I thought I would put them up here. I thought it was cool to see some of the same stuff I videoed too, but from a different angle and with a different device. Like especially the Sam Quill song of John Martyn:
And my Chapin:
I think there’s more to come from Nigel, but here’s another I did but did not get up in my original post:
Last night was a little weird at the Highlander and elsewhere as it was the eve of the national Bastille Day holiday in France. That meant a different atmosphere, some of the regular places not doing the regular thing – ie, no vocal jam at the Cavern club down the street from the Highlander, and there seemed to be no open mic at the Mazet either, although there was a sound board.
Still, there were some interesting acts at the Highlander open mic, and I got to play without any long wait despite arriving around 9 PM, which is normally too late.
I enjoyed the Hungarian musician, Marton Felszeghy, and I hope he can suggest a place for me to play in Budapest later in the month, as he said he might be able to do.
Thomas Brun was in his usual good form, and I loved the “Psycho Killer” by Chris O’Connell, an American lawyer who was in Paris for work, but who decided to play the open mics since he used to live here and knows the terrain well.
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.
It’s really the nature of human existence, isn’t it? We have an a amazing time one night or for a string of nights in a situation that we then try to repeat elsewhere and we are automatically let down, taken down to a more normal level. It’s why people get carried away with drugs…go on an amazing trip and you want more, and more, and higher and higher. Of course, that then leads to disaster and death. Well, that was the position I found myself in last night after four days in Oxford at four venues on three evenings, all of which were rounded out by the best evening of them all – at the Harcourt Arms. Back in Paris at two of my favorite open mics, it just didn’t match up.
That is in no way a reflection of the Tennessee Bar and Galway Pub open mics on Monday night in Paris. It was just a question of a roll of the dice that meant I had an amazing time in Oxford, and then returning to Paris I experienced something I am very used to – and which was not, as it turned out, quite as outstanding as it sometimes can be…like just two weeks ago when I was raving about these same two open mics after a barren weekend in Valencia, Spain. So this is not a judgment on two of my favorite open mics in Paris, just an observation on the workings of my emotional interieur. Even so, there were some very high moments last night, and both open mics had a lot of people playing. Here are some videos:
This is Oxford, right? So the fact of going up to perform in an open mic and finding yourself facing a battery of art sketchers and writers, and why not professors, is not really that surprising, right? Well, last night at the Harcourt Arms pub in Oxford, I was a little taken aback by it all. And I had the greatest time in the world. Not just singing, speaking to the artists – who were sketching the musicians – and taking in the local beer, but also listening to a nightlong lineup of wonderful musicians.
This IS Oxford. It means it is full of interesting people, loads of musicians, open mics, and great pubs. The Harcourt Arms is a mainstay, located in the highly sought after Jericho – I’ll have to check that spelling – district of Oxford. A friend of mine told me they used to have a weekly or monthly Gothic night there, but lately the pub was bought by a new owner and it happened at just the same moment that the Bookbinder’s Pub around the corner went through some change of hands or renovation and got rid of its four-year-old open mic. That highly successful open mic was run by Nigel Brown, and somehow he and the new owners of the Harcourt Arms connected and came to an agreement about having an open mic on Sundays. Thank goodness they did. This was very cozy, warm, well run, and there is even a backyard area where you can escape to think of other things, if you want.
But you won’t want. If you like open mics. The sound system is great, the room is convivial, and the night was full of musicians and spectators. And as it turned out, I felt like I was an art school model, but when I asked the artists if they were a group belonging to a school, they said “No.” They were just there for the fun of it. I also noticed a novelist or memoirist writing during the music; so it was that I felt more at home than ever doing my videos of the performers and then my interviews with spectators and Nigel Brown, for my documentary.
Loved some of the performers, the last two – Sam Quill doing a John Martyn song and Kasra – being particularly interesting, but also Jon Soul of the JJ Soul Band, with his Tom Waits voice….
Oh, and someone very kindly offered to do a video of me singing Borderline – second time in a week – and I accepted, and I’m glad I did. We get the artists here too, and it’s not a bad video….
The Oxford Folk Club was one of my favorite finds on the world tour of open mics and jam sessions in the last three years. It was the only place at which I really felt at home singing my traditional English, Irish and Scottish folk songs, and it was occasionally visited by some of my favorite musicians of my teenage years. Last night, however, although I did end up singing “Peter’s Song” by the Sands Family, because I was with Vanessa, and we only know popular rock-like songs, that’s we did: “Mad World” and the closest we could come to folk, “Just Like a Woman.”
In fact, I need not have worried. They applauded us warmly and sang and clapped along. And more than that, not only did two other people do Bob Dylan songs, but when I spoke for my open mic documentary to Lucy, one of the organizers, she told me that although the main sound is folk, all music is welcome. It is rarely sung into a microphone, or played with electric instruments, but she said that even there sometimes people bring their own mic and other equipment.
In any case, last night was another warm success on the Friday open night, which alternates generally with a Friday night guest night, every two weeks. There were folk singers from Britain, Spain, France, and it was just a very warm environment as usual. Located on the top floor of the Folly Bridge Inn, it is a nice occasion to have a pub meal below and then drink your draft and listen to the music and play upstairs. It ends early, too, around 11 PM, so you have time to do other things afterwards, if you want.
Of the acts I particularly enjoyed, there was a man who did a long but passionate and interesting version of the Roi Renaud, a great guitarist and Pam on her concertina, and a couple of great women singers.
P.S., Unfortunately, my internet connection has not improved since yesterday, so I am still stuck with a horrendously slow connection, and therefore I have problems uploading videos. I’ll do my best and upload later if possible.
