Brad Spurgeon's Blog

I wrote about my disappointing visit to the Grumpy open mic in Montreal the other day. Last night I decided to attend the Grumpy’s bar weekly open jam session called Moonshine on Thursday, run by Mike Emmet. This is a completely different atmosphere to the open mic on Tuesdays.

Having said that, the crowd is no more respectful of the musicians, and there seems to be two different things going on in the pub during this fabulous evening. While the pub patrons stand around and chat at high volume, the musicians all gather around on the stage – which resembles a corner of someone’s living room, and play together in a circle, with a high powered omni-directional mic in the middle of the circle.

The musicians can barely be heard over the noise of the bar, but every once in a awhile the patrons applaud the musicians. There is a complicity and sense of community and communion amongst the musicians, however, that makes it so that this evening is really something special: while the clients drink and talk, the musicians have fun playing together. If they attract appreciation of the “listeners,” fine. If not, that’s fine too.

The only drawback to the evening for me is that this is almost exclusively bluegrass and “old time” music, or old country and hill billy kind of stuff. So although last year I sang Hank Williams’ “I’m So Lonesome I Could Cry,” this year I felt unequal to the task of playing with these musicians, so I did not take part. Having already played in one open mic, and with another waiting for me on Sunday, I knew that my stay in Montreal would not be without music.

It was great, however, to see the variety that Grumpy’s is capable of delivering, from a weird and cliquey open mic on Tuesdays to a warm and family-like bluegrass jam on Saturdays.