Last night was an embarrassment of riches for me in terms of concerts by friends or acquaintances. I had four choices of places to go. It turned out to be easy to make the choice: I had to attend the last concert ever of the group The Parisians at the International, and from there I had to go to see my friend Paddy Mulcahy and his musicians in French Rumba at the Scoop Café, rue des Dames.
I could also have gone to see All the Roads at the Backstage O’Sullivan’s or Ollie Joe at the Bus Palladium. But once I had gone to the Parisians, and knew that Paddy lives in Limerick and so does not spend THAT much time in Paris, I had to go to his show. Not to mention that he said it would end in a jam, which made me think I could play a bit.
Although the Scoop had to turn down the music fairly early, Paddy led me down to a lower room after the show where I got to sing a couple of songs – making my night. Oh, no, sorry. Making my night! Paddy’s band was great. Accordion, fiddle, vocals, guitars, it was a wild eclectic mix of sounds from around the world and not just from Ireland. Lots of South American influence too. I enjoyed it immensely, it was warm and cosy and friendly.
Which, unfortunately, was NOT the case at the last concert of Parisians. The Parisians are a French band that have existed with one line up of musicians or another since around 2004. They were at the center of the whole baby rocker scene that sprouted up out of Earle Holmes’s open mic at the Shebeen. Interestingly, although the Parisians have been in an on that scene since then, they actually have never had any kind of hit song, or even anything vaguely recognizable by the general French public.
But they are very definitely a very cool underground kind of rock ‘n roll band. They surprised me last night by doing a cover song I do all the time, “Wicked Game,” in a very punk manner. And they had Miggles, one of the original members, join them as well.
But all in all the evening at the International with the Parisians’ last concert was way too successful to be any fun or entice me to stick around very long. I could not get close to the stage there were so many people. I managed to video some stuff from the stairway through the plexiglass window, so I did catch a bit of vibe for this blog. But mostly I got nothing – including a minimal personal interaction with people I know, as there were so many people and it was impossible to sort the friends from the masses. All in all, a big let down and I was glad that I had Paddy’s place to go to for something much more in the tradition of the original Shebeen….
The evening was so incredible last night at the open mic of the Arte Café that I had barely the time to make any videos, and I have come up with only two for the blog – and they were not very representative of the whole, although they are cool in their way. This relatively new open mic in Paris on Fridays has turned into something that feels much bigger than an open mic. It felt very often last night like a good “old fashioned” – though not old in the calcified sense – artistic salon of the 1920s and 30s… not that I ever attended one of those.
The Arte Cafe is run by two wonderful young women who have mountains of taste and talent. The walls have art, there is a bookshelf with books, a literary magazine or two, and the room itself is like someone’s kitchen in size. But the feel as the place filled up last night was more like a literary salon in someone’s living room. And the accent was on young and dynamic.
It got so full of people that the usual cramped quarters for 15 people seemed like it was housing 75 people – although it wasn’t. I arrived fairly late, in fact, and was immediately hauled on “stage” to play a musical background to the risqué poetry recitation of Lisa Marie, who has occasionally spoken at the Ptit Bonheur la Chance. Perhaps Lisa Marie preferred to have me safely up there with her on stage playing my guitar rather than videoing her recitations of her risqué poems as I have done in the past. Who knows?!
But from there, since I was already next to the microphone, I was asked to play some songs myself. I had no idea where to start after Lisa Marie’s success and tone. But she herself suggested I do “Cat’s in the Cradle.” I find it hard to refuse a request I am capable of doing, so I did it, and people actually sang along. So that was great. Then I did “Mrs Robinson,” which was not as much of a hit as the night before at the Highlander – maybe I did not “hit” it myself – and then I did my own song, Borderline, which did go down very well.
There were several other musicians and singers and another spoken word person, but the feel last night was more toward social occasion than complete and pure open mic. I loved it.
Okay, so, after a couple of down nights, or average nights, or not so inspiring nights, or make me want to quit nights at the Paris open mics – no fault of the open mics – I finally had the dream moment last night. This was really, purely and simply down to a few factors, the two main ones being the person who runs one of the open mics and the audience at that open mic.
I started off by saying to myself that it was way too late to go to the Highlander open mic, since it is so popular that you have to show up at 8:15 if you really want to have a hope in hell of getting behind the mic before about 1:20 AM. So I went to the new and cool and laid-back Vieux Léon open mic in the Vieux Léon bar near the Pompidou Center. Part of the reason I went there, too, was because my inspiring friend Baptiste Hamon runs the open mic, and announced it on his facebook.
A letdown was that for the second time in a row, he wasn’t there! But the open mic was just as laid back and cool as usual. Furthermore, I found out that a guy who worked there was also head of the association of homeless people for whom the proceeds of my gig the week before on the Dame de Canton peniche were given. (Sorry for the twisted sentence.) So I was greeted warmly by him and by my friends the musician, and I got to play two sets and a total of six or seven songs. Great stuff. But I felt kind of low and out of it and not really cool or effective, with every song I sang.
Part of that feeling, I was sure, was that I had had such a great time the night before playing acoustically at the Ptit Bonheur la Chance at the end of the evening. On neither night, however, did my “Mrs Robinson” really seem to go down the way I had hoped – although less so at the Vieux Léon than at the Ptit Bonheur la Chance.
So anyway….
The Vieux Léon open mic ended at midnight and I decided to head over to the Highlander just to say hello to the friends I expected would be there. The Highlander is THE mainstay open mic of Paris, the best attended, best loved across the board, and always draws a loyal clientele of musicians and spectators. It is run by the genial Thomas Brun. For me, the problem remains always that it is so popular that I cannot get there in time for the 8:15 sign up that you basically have to do so not to be relegated to the graveyard set.
The other potential problem with it is that it is one of the most talkative audiences in the world. But at the same time, it is also one of the most captive audiences and if you manage to grab that audience and lift it out of the talk vein, then you have an amazing experience of singalong and love attention.
Well, the place was rocking when I got there near 12:30. And Thomas Brun was really warm in welcoming me back after a couple of months of absence with all the trips around the world I had made that prevented me from attending. I met up with old friends, talked, listened to some cool musicians – met a guy I had seen playing at around age 16 and who was now around 20 and playing better – and I just generally fell into the nice warm world of the Highlander.
Then Thomas came up to me and said one of the people who had signed up had just disappeared and if I wanted to, I could do a set. I was really delighted, as I never expected that. And it was so kind of Thomas to suggest it, rather than take advantage of just closing down early. So before I knew it, I was up to play. And I decided that this crowd was hot and ready for stuff that they could take part in – and so, after what I’d been through for the previous two nights, was I.
Totally unexpected, Thomas announced me at the mic, introducing the return of the guy who had been around the world since the last time he played there a couple of months before, and everyone cheered to a degree that left me speechless. I had to give. So I started with “I Won’t Back Down,” of Tom Petty, and it went really well. On that, I thought I could push it a bit more and go for the so-far not fantastically successful “Mrs. Robinson,” and whoosh…..! It was a huge success, everything I could ever have dreamed of. I knew suddenly what it felt like to be a rock star and have everyone sing along and feel the love together with you as you do it.
It confirmed my feeling that I could add Mrs Robinson to my list of “crowd pleasers,” and I was just blown off my feet. I then said I did not know what to do next, but I wanted another drug addiction song, crowd pleasing thing. So I said, “Mad World” or “What’s Up!” and two voices said, “Mad World.” I actually wanted to do it, and I dived right into it. As I began that song, this darling gorgeous young woman with a bandana – what, 20 years old? – came up and started dancing beside me next to the mic as I played. I thought she was there to join me in the chorus too, but she wasn’t. So we just went through the whole thing with her dancing, and the crowd clapping, dancing and singing along.
I KNOW what it means to feel like a rock star and have this communion with the audience. It was last night at the Highlander. Thank you. Of course, next goal is to have the same reaction to one of my own songs – although I have had similar things occasionally. But I can imagine what i must feel like for Simon & Garfunkel or Bob Dylan or the Beatles, when everyone knows the song and sings along and goes crazy with you as you go crazy…. Thanks Highlander!
This will be even shorter than yesterday’s post, time problems being the reason. But I did want to report that the open mic at the Ptit Bonheur la Chance once again delivered on its promise last night. Well, almost, and with a little help from whatever…. I got there just before 10 PM and that put me last on the list. But at least I was on the list. In the end, I played an acoustic set, no amp, no mic, and just laid into the thing with my Gibson, singing stuff that the five remaining spectators – from about 50 at the peak – could sing along to and clap along to. I was really in a state of “bonheur,” quel chance.
But then, the rest of the evening turned into some really cool jamming in the basement room and then some jamming in the ground floor room, and some neat meetings and conversations, and all together, in the end, it was a full and fun night. Bonheur.
So here are a few of the videos – including with one of the coolest meetings being with the lap slide player Tom Laroye with his amazing 1927 Weissenborn lap slide made of loa wood in the same shape as the ubiquitous Hawaiian guitars of the time, his having been built by a German named Weissenborn living in Los Angeles at that time….
I felt like I was on another planet last night at the Coolin open mic, my first open mic since my return from my 20-country world open mic and jam session tour. So I will not say ANYTHING here, but let the videos do the talking. Oh, ok, I did manage to get through my “Mrs Robinson,” for the first time without the lyrics in front of me. But the rest of it is in the videos. Please excuse the inevitable come-down from a year of stimulating world travel…. (I mean, this IS Paris!!!!)
I have decided to create a new feature type of article on this blog. Because this is a blog, and because I believe in Ernest Hemingway’s dictum about writers not criticizing other writers in print as reviewers – “You cannot run with the hare and hunt with the hounds,” he said – but because I love to read good books and talk about them, I have decided to start this occasional feature. The idea is that I am not going to place myself on a critical pedestal and dictate what is righteous or not about a book I read. I am not going to recommend it as a piece of literature or a consumer product. I am not going to fulfill the role of the book reviewer whatsoever. I’m not even certain I would have the talent, let alone the knowledge, training and authority. This is a blog. It is my space, Brad’s world. So what I will do when I feel compelled, will be to write about books I am reading or have read or feel compelled to write about for any other reason. This “Not-Book-Review,” as I will call the writing, will be something people can read, and should read, only as a reflection of how I felt about the book – not a recommendation that they should or should not read it.
The idea was inspired by the book I just finished, and that accompanied me from Austin, Texas to Sao Paulo to New York’s JFK airport and then back to Paris, all in the last week and a half. I rarely read any 500-page book that quickly. But I did it this time. And I can’t even say that I think this book is some kind of gripping masterpiece. But I really, thoroughly loved reading Neil Young’s autobiography, memoir, tale of his life past, present and maybe future.
I left off on my long and rambling post yesterday by saying that I would end my open mic world adventure with the story of what I did upon my arrival back in Paris after two weeks away and two days return travel. That return was a killer, because it involved two night flights, sleeping in economy class two nights in a row on American Airlines, and in between the two nights, an 11-hour stopover at JFK in NYC. Did it therefore make sense to accept to do a musical gig on the very night of my return after all that, on Wednesday? Oh it sure did! It was just what I required to kickstart my return to Paris life.
The call came on my cell phone as my shuttle bus pulled into the airport in Sao Paulo on Monday evening. Someone had to withdraw from a gig slot on Wednesday night because they had a concert in London. Would I be able to replace them? Oh, yes, I would love to! First, the location seemed very cool. It was a peniche, or barge, on the Seine. Second, the gig was just a half-hour set, so I could do that with no advance preparation. Third, there were a number of other interesting acts on the same bill. Fourth, I learned this later, that the proceeds of the show went to a charity.
And finally, I realized instantly, that if I could get my favorite lead guitarist, Félix Beguin, to join me for the gig, then I would be finishing off immediately upon arrival my challenge of recording myself playing with a musician in all 20 of the countries I visited this year. I had not yet really done it in Paris, and time goes so quickly, I was sure I could let it lag and drag and the end of the year would come and I would not have found the occasion. So I texted Félix and he agreed immediately. I would only find out the night we played that he had another gig lined up for London, England the following day with his other band, the Burnin’ Jacks, and so he had to get up early for that. Imagine him accepting to play with me? So cool.
So I arrived at my home at 8 AM on Wednesday morning, dived into bed and slept until 2:30 in the afternoon as those night flights had not allowed me enough sleep to be in good shape for anything, let along a gig. Then I got up and ate breakfast, washed all my clothes and dried them and ironed something for the gig. Then I went to the gig.
The peniche, called La Dame de Canton, was even better than I thought it would be. I had heard of it, but never seen it. It is intimate, has three levels to it, or four really, with the concert hall level, a bar above, a bar below, and a restaurant in the very bottom. The stage is big enough for a band, it is well lit, there is an excellent sound system and a sound man who takes time to make sure everything is set up perfectly for you – we did this well before the gig – and there is a nice, relaxed feel to the whole room. I loved it and felt really at home, and in a place that is made for small concerts.
Facebook listed exactly 100 people accepting the invitation for the gig, and that had mostly to do with the other bands – including Blankass, and no doubt the guy I was replacing, and above all, Melody Says, the woman who organized the show. Melody Says got the whole place dancing at one point, and her show was very polished and together – which is quite cool for a woman of 20….
Anyway, after our set – which went very well, it was so great to see people listening – Félix and I decided that we would watch the other acts and then go off and play some more songs together at an open mic. That was the Vieux Léon, which is a young open mic, having existed only a couple of months or so. I knew there would not be a vast list of people – unlike at the Highlander – so despite showing up a little late, we got to play our songs. I think we did five songs, most of which we had not done at the Dame de Canton, and which we have barely played together before. So that was fun – and went down well again.
Now, tomorrow I will introduce a new feature kind of story on the blog, which has also occupied a lot of my time in the last week. I’ll keep that one a surprise – although it’s no big deal. Just an idea.
I left everyone hanging at just the worst moment, and I’m really sorry that you all lost sleep over it! I had just arrived in Sao Paulo for the last leg of my 20 country and every continent – except Africa and Antarctica – tour of 2012 and I wrote more details of my magical musical adventure in Austin, Texas. And then, suddenly, the man vanishes. As if eaten by the criminals of Sao Paulo. Where is the musical adventure of the Brazilian city of the samba and bossa nova and all that jazz?
Well, time just became too much with me. First, the reason this report is so late is that I had a two-day travel back from Sao Paulo via New York’s JFK airport, where I spent 11 hours working on my stories for my final work-related event of the year. That also consisted of two night flights. So I was really out of commission as far as this blog and music go, for days. Then upon my return, I had to sleep away Wednesday day in order to have the energy to play a gig on Wednesday night that suddenly materialized when I received a phone call as I arrived in the bus at the Sao Paul airport. That will be the subject of tomorrow’s blog item, that gig.
So I will return the final leg of my world open mic, open jam musical adventure. In fact, Sao Paulo ended on a down note on the final night. In the four years of this adventure readers of this blog will have noticed that I found only one true open jam session in Sao Paulo, and it takes place on the Sunday night and goes all night long. It has been one of the best open jam experiences I have ever had, and it is largely bossa nova and other Brazilian forms of music, played by professional and amateur musicians sitting all together around a table in a bar all night long. People join the jam as they please, drop out when they want, then return again.
This year, after I contacted one of my friends who takes part in the jam to find out if it was still taking place at the same location, I learned that in fact, no, it wasn’t. I had missed the jam two years ago after it had moved to a new location and I had not known how to find the new one. This time, I was told the jam had moved again and that on Sunday night, it would take place at around 8 PM in two different places, starting in one place and then moving to the other at around 22:00. Well, I had a load of work to do for the racing job I do, since the title was decided and it required a lot more writing than usual.
So I could only make it to the second location of the jam. I went out to dinner with my friend, the musician Bruno Santos, and after the meal he drove me over to the second location of the jam. We got there after midnight. We could see from the car that there were only two people in the place – one man with a guitar, and someone else. It was a bar in Vila Madalena, but it was clearly, clearly not a huge success, this jam. I asked Bruno to please just drive me back to my hotel, which was near his apartment. My thought was that if the jam DID get going, it would clearly take a couple of hours, and I did not want to risk staying up all night for what might not be so great.
Open mics and open jams are not a big part of the culture in Sao Paulo. I heard back from my friend that she had gone to the first place and stayed longer and it had been quite a success. She then went on to the second place, and I have to tell her still why I did not show up.
Okay. Now. I do not want my faithful – or even unfaithful – readers of this blog to think that my worldwide open mic and open jam adventure ended on a failure. In fact, I there is a complete other part to this year’s adventure, which I have mentioned several times on this blog, and in that area, the visit to Sao Paulo was a huge success. My goal this year, one of my projects, was to record myself on my little Roland R26 recorder playing music in every country I visited, playing with a local musician. This I succeeded at: 20 countries, including France (although I have to get back to that part in tomorrow’s post), and Brazil was no exception.
The first day I was there, on the Thursday, I went to the aforesaid Bruno’s apartment and we played music for hours. It represented the only break from work I have had for 3 weeks – aside from the open mics in Austin – and together we played my songs, with me on vocals and guitar, and Bruno accompanying on guitar, keyboards and drums. He also sang some of his songs. The part we recorded on the Roland was with me playing my song and singing and playing my guitar, and Bruno playing drums.
Unlike in any of the other countries where I recorded, however, this little experiment turned out to be massively productive, as we chose to play a song that I wrote recently, but for which there was still a question mark hanging over it as to whether I had truly found the right structure. Bruno listened to me play it a couple of times, then he played along. Then he said immediately that he thought he detected a problem. We discussed it, and while my first reaction was that I did not want to write more lyrics to it, my second reaction was that I suddenly realized I did NOT have to write more lyrics, but just change the order of the lyrics and parts of the song. So we did it again, with me changing the structural order but using exactly the same lyrics, verses, chorus and bridge. It worked better than ever.
Now, this was all possible because Bruno Santos – who was born in Brazil but grew up on just about every continent except the really cold one – is one kick-ass musician. I wrote extensively about him and his album last year, and he continues to develop his music and musicianship – the keyboards being a recent addition – and I predict a brilliant career for this guy. In fact, I know that his self-made album – where he plays all instruments and produced the thing himself – is selling steadily and has had huge media attention in Brazil.
So the long and short of this long and involved, if late, report, is that the Brazil weekend went beautifully in terms of me playing music in Brazil, and I COULD have played in that last Sunday night jam. But I decided for once that I had achieved enough, and needed sleep more than anything else in an effort at preparing for the coming two nights of sleep on the flights and days in the airports. I left Brazil walking on the clouds – literally – especially after that telephone call offering me the gig in Paris as soon as I arrived. More on my delight over that one, in tomorrow’s post.
