Galway Pub Paris | Brad Spurgeon's Blog

Variation on a Paris Open Mic Theme – Three Down, Back to First

July 17, 2012
bradspurgeon

It’s really summertime in Paris, and the fish are jumping out of the open mics and into the ocean beaches and elsewhere. Some open mics are closed down for the summer in the capital, Paris, but those that stay open and honor the musicians who stay in Paris do an even bigger favor to themselves by giving a place to play music to all the visiting tourists that crowd the city in the summer. Having said that, last night was a pretty quiet one from one open mic to the other – with all three of the main places in the Latin Quarter showing slower than usual business. One rose above the others, however.

I started off, late, at Coolin and I played early, as the musician population was low. I decided not to hang around, as I really wanted to see if business was jumping more in the other venues. So I tripped on over to the Tennessee Bar and found a weird and cool banjo player on stage and a much thinner audience than usual at that time of night – around 23:20.

So I just cut out of there without playing, went on over to the Galway Pub, and found it to be low on musicians too – although one who was there was there thanks to finding the place on my open mic list on this blog, a tourist with his guitar, Clinton Tavares – and I played my set immediately upon arrival. (Well, another guy did one more song.)

So I drank only a half a Kilkenny there before deciding to go home. Then I thought, nah, double back and check out the action at Coolin again. So although I had to force myself – since I suddenly had the prospect of an early rise today – I returned, and found the Coolin just buzzing and jumping as all the fish had discovered it was the best environment on this Monday night in July for a bit of wild musical letting go.

I listened to a number of musicians, danced with a beautiful woman, then played one last song of my own before leaving absolutely fulfilled. Summertime can still be nice in Paris – even if I prefer April, which here, is not the cruelest month. Better stop there before I butcher and more prose (or is it pros?)….

MCing the Galway Open Mic in Paris

July 3, 2012
bradspurgeon

Last night I got a bit of a taste of what it is like to MC an open mic at one of the long-lasting, mainstay open mic venues in Paris, and all I can say to those who do it all the time is: Respect! I had some experience doing this myself at my Mecano Sunday brunches for around six months a year or so ago. But taking over a regular venue for one night gives a whole new look at things.

I have to thank all my musician friends who showed up to play and help me, as without them I’d have had to play all night myself. Okay, what I really meant to say, was, without them, it would have been a somewhat barren affair, given that it was the beginning of the July holidays in France, and the day after a major soccer match. So lots of people stayed home.

But I had lots of performers, and I would have been able to do even more videos had I not been working out the sound feedback, musician monitor and other technical glitches that I came slightly unprepared for. I had actually been prepared by a photo taken of the soundboard on my iPhone the previous week – but after the iPhone was stolen over the weekend, I lost my crutch.

Thanks to Thomas Arlo and Brislee Adams for helping me out of that. And especial thanks to Joe Cady for turning up with his violin, to play along with me and several other musicians – and for taking that little video of me on his iPhone as I sang my song, “Except Her Heart.” Oh, and boy, there was this really cool trio that arrived for the first time, and it was their first gig together – and that was really, really exciting from the point of view of running the open mic. Check out the videos I did manage to do of them….

Next week Romain returns to do the job he has been doing so well…

Coolin Victim of its Success, Galway Great Relief

June 26, 2012
bradspurgeon

I occasionally write rotten, nasty, unfriendly things about open mics that a) I usually love, and b) I’ve written huge praise about before. I hate doing that, but if I kept the criticism to myself all the time and only ever said nice things about the places I go play music at, then who could trust that they would find anything like the truth on this blog? Who could respect me and think that there’s a real story being told here? And the friends who saw me angry about Coolin’ pub last night, if I said nice things about it – wouldn’t they find the real person and the public writer a bit of a hypocritical contrast?

So unfortunately, I had a rotten time at Coolin last for practically the first time ever and I feel completely obliged to say it. I will nevertheless temper the criticism with the statement that part of the problem was that I had to go off to the Galway afterward and so could not stay to the end of the Coolin evening to see how it all panned out, or even to play my own set. But the problem, at base, was this: Coolin has become such a fabulous success and draw to musicians as an open mic that last night there were 30 musicians signed up to play!

The organizers being so kind that they want to give everyone a chance to play, actually made a bit of a mess of it, as names on the list ended up not being on a first-come, first-serve basis, and some performers were surprised to see their slots not ending up where they had expected, and having to wait a lot longer than expected. One guy, in fact, discovered that his slot on the list had been taken by another guy who said he had the same name!!!! Had I not intervened on that one, the guy – whom I know – would perhaps not have played, or played last.

In short, it was total chaos AND the crowd was one of the loudest, least interested that I have seen. Having said that, the organizers made a big effort to get everyone up, and I’m pretty sure they must have, since the open mic went on until close to 2 AM. And photos I have seen show that it may indeed have turned into a great evening with warm audience connection and participation by the end. But I was embarrassed that my friends who came on my advice, ended up being thrown around on the list, at what appeared to be the convenience of other more important friends.

Hey, that’s all really petty, though, isn’t it? And actually, the only thing it really says is that for the first time Coolin, because of all of its success, had 30 people on the list and did not know how to deal with the influx – which is normal. I suppose all successful open mics have to pass through that situation at some point, and find ways to tell performers they will NOT be able to play.

In any case, I left at about 12:15, went to the Galway, and I was asked immediately if I wanted to play – as there were no more performers on the list, since they were at Coolin! – and I accepted happily (as I had told Coolin I would not play there) and then discovered two friends were there whom I had not expected. This was Joe Cady and Rony Boy, a fiddler and a guitarist from a band called The Romantic Black Shirts. I asked if they would play along with me, and they agreed happily. I had played with Rony Boy last week, and I have played with Joe many times. But we had never played all together.

So my Galway experience ended up being a fabulous dream compared to Coolin! I was so happy to play with those guys that I decided to place my Zoom Q3HD recorder behind us to record it, even though I was pretty sure the framing of the image would be crap. So I have placed three of those songs up on the site, but remember, I knew the image would be crap, and the sound comes from the monitor for the musicians, not from the speakers in the pub.

Oh, and by the way, I will not be returning to Coolin next week – but not because I’m pissed off. It’s because I will be hosting the Galway Pub open mic myself as the guest MC as the regular MC, All the Roads, is taking the day off. So all that ends well ends well… or whatever…. Of course, after this post, maybe Coolin would not even let me in again next week!!! But I have to be honest. I do repeat, however, that I might have perceived the Coolin evening different if I had stayed to the end – and my perceptions will not reflect those of all participants last night, I’m sure….

Coolin’ Off, so Cooling Off at the Tennessee and Galway

June 19, 2012
bradspurgeon

The Coolin’ bar’s open mic decided to take a break last night since there was some big soccer match on its TV screens in the first part of the evening. That meant I returned to the Tennessee and the Galway for the first time in a while, and I had a real cool time – especially thanks to friend Rony Boy who asked if he could play lead along with me during my sets.

It was so cool, and while I had begun the evening a little tired and in low gear, everything served to show me once again that live does not repeat itself at the open mics. Rony Boy played along with me at both venues, and we had a lot of fun doing my favorite covers – Mad World, What’s Up, Crazy Love, Wicked Game and I Won’t Back Down. Rony Boy then played his sets right after mine in both places, and he sounded amazing with his Larrivée guitar. I especially loved his Daniel Lanois cover, which I have praised him for in the past.

There were also lots of other interesting acts, and an invitation to me from “All the Roads,” the host of the Galway open mic, to host the open mic on July 2, which I accepted with pleasure. All that because there was no Coolin’!!! So, like, hey, you lose a lover, maybe there’s another in store somewhere…. 🙂

A Tour of Three Open Mics in Paris in One Night

May 1, 2012
bradspurgeon

I travelled from one madhouse scene to another until I alighted at the Galway and settled down for some great music, beer and chat. That does not mean I didn’t have fun in the madhouses – but you can live only so long in a madhouse before your feet need a strong, settled earth beneath them. The thing that happened was a combination of a soccer – football, if you want – match between two teams from Manchester and a French public holiday the following day (today). Consequently, the venues were more packed and more crazy than usual.

Still, I was really pleased to arrive first at the Tennessee bar and find myself next on the list. I had not played at this, one of my favorite open mics in Paris, for a very, very long time – always arriving too late, and then leaping off to other realms. So I went up and played four songs, one of which was my new one, which I have not officially named. I had to read the lyrics, and that NEVER seems to work well for me – especially in a place where the chatter is more important than the music. As it seemed last night.

So I watched a couple of other acts and then moved on to Coolin and got there just in time to watch the end of the match on a very, very large screen. I need a screen that big, or even bigger, to make soccer of any interest to me at all, since if I see it on a television I get bored as hell. (Not fair, not really true: I have made the effort most of my adult life to NOT get into soccer. It’s the last thing I need, I think, to break the last strand of sanity I have left keeping me away from being involved full time in professional sports appreciation.)

So I was something like the third person up on the stage at the Coolin bar, but as it turned out, the crowd was there mostly for the match, too, and they were kind of digesting whatever it was that happened in the game and thinking about drinking all night since they were not going to work today, and I felt there was only half a brain present for the music from each listener. No, wait, let me correct that. Football fans only have half a brain to start with, so it must have been a quarter of a brain.

(Sorry, really, just joking.)

Anyway, so I left that mad house – telling Lena, one of the MCs – that it was a bit to mad for me. And I went to the Galway. Now the Galway, naturally, had ALSO had the game airing before the open mic started, not long after I arrived. But at the Galway these screens are pretty much normal sized TV thingys. So the minds had not been quite so consumed by the match, and the crowd – large though it remained – was more open to music. By then, of course, I had already sung seven songs and I was very warmed up.

There was also a peculiar sort of Irish band called the Shamrocks, which is comprised of a couple of French guys from the south of France…. So that set a kind of tone and atmosphere that was different to the previous joints as well. So I played four songs and then settled down and spoke to an interesting Irishwoman for the rest of the evening.

All in all, it was an unexpected and fully refreshing evening with a difference.

An Open Mic, an Intercontinental Meeting and a Free Pizza at Bertha Brown in Melbourne

March 21, 2012
bradspurgeon

My intention today had been to report on both the Monday and Tuesday night open mics that I did in Melbourne. But time has caught up with me, I am now sitting in my hotel in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia, and while I have a great Internet connection again FINALLY – after a week of crappy connections in Australia – I also now have a gig to perform tonight at the Backyard Pub in Kuala Lumpur. So time presses and I will only be able to report on my Monday open mic at Bertha Brown in Melbourne – but it’s worth it!

Interview with Shane Walters, MC of Bertha Brown open mic in Melbourne:

Had it not been for the slow Internet connection in my Best Western hotel in Melbourne I’d have had this up long ago…. But anyway…. I learned about the Bertha Brown open mic when I was performing at the Felix Bar open mic. That is the way these things go. You do one, you meet people, they tell you about other ones. One of the fabulous things about the Bertha Brown open mic is that they are VERY musician-friendly: They offer the performers a glass of beer and a wonderful pizza that makes a full meal.

The stage is wonderful, fairly large and high and well-lit; the bar/restaurant is huge, with two different wings; and the sound system is great. The open mic is run by a different person every month, but all the people who run it – the guest MCs – belong to a kind of musicians’ cooperative called Songwriters in the Round.

I did an interview with the MC, Shane Walters, as part of my series of interviews with the people involved in open mics around the world. But it was only after the interview that we made a connection. Shane had been practicing his French with me several times through the evening, even when presenting me on stage. And later I told him that one of my good friends in Paris was an Australian from Melbourne who ran an open mic, a guy named Stephen Prescott. (I added that Stephen had since moved to another European city.)

“Was that in an Irish pub?” said Shane.

I said it was, it was in the Galway. Shane then said that he not only played in the open mic at the Galway a couple of years ago when he went to Paris, but he stayed while in Paris at the home of a friend of Stephen’s. Man, talk about a small world!

And there were a lot of interesting acts, including an original guy who I had to equate in my mind as a “punk Bob Dylan.” That was Jack Gramski, and his songs for the most part were incredibly influenced by Bob Dylan, but with a cool angry punk delivery. (Just realized that the video I put up is not the most representative of that, though!)

Crazy Mad Night at 3 Open Mics in Paris

January 31, 2012
bradspurgeon

coolin irish pub paris

I had no idea what I was getting into last night after three days away from performing in open mics in Paris. I thought I’d take in a bit of the Tennessee Bar and the Galway, as usual, with the focus being entirely on the latter, in its first evening with the new MC, Romain of All the Roads. But I ended up having someone slip me a calling card and telling me there was a new open mic in Paris on Mondays as well, and I could not resist the visit. Thank goodness I did not resist!

First, the Tennessee Bar was as crowded as ever, and thanks to my usual effort to get there on time with a metro system that always works against me – just one change, but a 7-minute wait for both trains – I arrived far to late to have an early playing time. So I took a beer and watched a few acts and then went to the Galway. There were some cool acts at the Tennessee, by the way, with the Swiss named Mathieu, who had been at the Mazet on Thursday, and some other new guy who had a very interesting, high pitched, melodious voice and some nice lyrics and good guitar playing.

There was absolutely no way that I was going to miss the first open mic at the Galway without Stephen Danger Prescott running it, as he moved off to some other country and Romain took over the show. Romain did a fine job last night, and there were some musicians new and old – I don’t mean old like me, I mean ones who had been there before.

I played my set, but I was getting a little tired and decided to go home. But I had this calling card I was given for a place called Coolin Irish Pub, just off the Boulevard St. Germain, not far at all from either of these venues. And so I thought I’d just take a glance inside before catching a cab back home.

Coolin is this large, wide open pub in the building where there used to be the St. Germain market. It has apparently been there for 15 years, and I have never set foot in it. That will now change. The atmosphere was immense: Free, free-wheeling, young, vibrant, fun, loud – no nasty neighbors to complain – and the sound system was even not bad at all, although they plan to improve it.

Run by Henry, one of the bar tenders, the open mic was on about its fifth night. And it, like Henry, was full of insouciance and good nature. In fact, the moment I entered the bar and someone spotted my guitar, I was invited up to the mic to play. Didn’t even get a chance to order a Kilkenny. Nor did i care. This was too cool to be able to enter and get up behind the mic instantly.

And I loved the fact that I found myself in front of this new audience after I’d already warmed up at the Galway, and none of these people had heard any of my songs before. So I just belted into a few of them with abandon, doing some covers and my own “Borderline.” Had ’em singing along, and it was just generally a visit to the high reaches of the joy that an open mic, and singing in public can provide.

I then got out from behind the mic and took my beer and sat and listened to the others. There wer a number of cool musicians, including Henry, and the Irishwoman, Eithne O Connor – and don’t bother asking me how to pronounce her first name, but think something close to Anne – as well as another Irishman and some of the people in the audience.

In fact, I learned that this open mic begins around a table at 10 PM – sounds like the Bar Varal jam in Sao Paulo, right? – and then it goes on to become the traditional thing behind the mic. And then sometime after midnight, it transfers back to a jam session at the table. You can see in my videos just how amazing and free the atmosphere is.

This place has big, big, big potential. In fact, it’s already 100 percent there. It has a little bit of everything, including lyrics and song books with chords, just in case! It just needs more people, and a little history – and then it will be a Paris classic.

Last Time: Stephen at Galway, and Reflection on Hit Songs and Big Bux

January 24, 2012
bradspurgeon

Last night was Stephen Danger Prescott’s last time presenting the open mic at the Galway Pub in Paris after three or four years on that job. He will be hugely missed, but he has decided to go as far away as Berlin in order to avoid being lured into the job again.

It was a good night there, and also at the Tennessee Bar open mic a few minutes walk away, under the aegis of James Iansiti. I only stayed a short time at the Tennessee, though, and did not sing there since I arrived too late to do that AND the Galway, and I had to attend Stephen’s last time.

And speaking of “Last Time,” that is the second theme of this post. Readers will have noticed that I have buddied around over the last week in Paris at the open mics with an Irish singer named Conn Bux. Last night as the two of us attended both open mics there was one singer who went up and I told Conn how much I liked the singer’s voice but that I felt all the songs sounded the same.

“All you need is one,” he said. He meant, of course, that all any group or singer really needs to break out of the lowest levels of the music business is one hit song. Of course, a load more of them than that would also be welcome.

But his words reminded me that over the two previous days I had been saying to myself that this was precisely Conn Bux’s own situation. I did not tell him that last night, but he had given me his three CDs last Friday – made over the last decade – and I had been listening to them in the mornings during my morning exercise.

One of things I thought as I heard Conn sing in the various open mics over the last week, and as I listened to his superb CDs, was that this Irishman is so good he just needs one hit song and he’ll break out. He’s got his own voice, a strong voice, musical talent and skill, and he plays well in cool bands.

This morning as I listened to Conn’s third – most recent CD-, called The Old Reliable, as I did my morning exercise, suddenly, it seemed to me that Conn’s hit song had just popped out of the laser and into my head. It was a song that I had listened to several times over the last week, and he sang it again last night at both the Tennessee Bar and the Highlander. It is called Last Time, and it has been ringing in my head all day. The version with the band brings yet another level to it, but this song is for me clearly a hit. It has memorable words, theme, melody – it rocks, it rolls, it souls….

So why is it NOT a hit? That then got me to thinking that NOTHING in the music business actually makes sense and that there are probably a lot of hit songs in existence that are NOT hits because of totally obscure reasons, and things like simple luck. Things like being in the right place at the right time, etc. Cliches.

Having said that, Conn is only around 35 years old, and I can see through his three CDs that he is developing as a musician too, and that no music careers follow any precise plans or routes. Some careers have exploded several decades in and suddenly the singer gets noticed, has a hit and starts earning the big bux.

So check out the Last Time performance at the Galway by Conn Bux, so appropriate on the last time Stephen acted as MC.

Mazet True to Itself

January 20, 2012
bradspurgeon

I attended my first open mic at the Mazet since it took a brief break for the festive holidays, and found that it was back to its regular ways. That means that it tends to start out fairly slow and discrete, and then it wakes up and becomes more intense, and often turns into a jam session at the end of the evening.

I met up with Conn Bux again, and he played some of his great songs, cutting through the chatter to have plenty of the many spectators applaud even during the middle of his songs. The Irishman was well received, to say the least.

I was pleased – if a little intimidated – that this time Conn’s friend, Saray, from Spain, asked if she could film me with my Zoom Q3HD recorder. I happily accepted. So I have more recordings here than usual of me….

During my set suddenly as I was singing “Mad World,” my upright bass player from the night before at the Highlander suddenly arrived, parked in front of the stage, and added another dimension to the song – injecting me with an instant fix of added energy as well. He then played with me on “Runaway Train” as well, and that was the end of my set.

Rimed showed up and played some of his sensational tapping, and there were a few other regulars who also played some lively and fun stuff.

I ended up cutting out at midnight, however, to go to Stephen Danger Prescott’s final Thursday night gig at the Galway before he heads off next week for Berlin. He will have one more open mic at the Galway, on Monday, though.

So all in all, it was a good evening at the open mic….

Ever Shifting Flow of Open Mic Attendance

January 17, 2012
bradspurgeon

I went to the Tennessee Bar’s open mic to start with last night and found the place almost entirely empty. I think that aside from the three or four musicians there were only there non-musician spectators. For the Tennessee Bar, that is very rare. It turned out that James was absent as MC, but I doubt many people knew that…. It gave me a chance to play early, however, and go to the Galway open mic a little earlier than usual, and there I find a huge crowd and lots of musicians….

I heard this guy named Connor from Ireland for the first time, and he had a great voice and delivery. Very inspiring. He had been there last week, and had complimented my songs, but I had not heard him play. So last night I was inspired by his voice to do my Gary Jules cover, “Andalucia,” and because I was not otherwise prepared to play it, I promptly forgot the words to the second half of the song and had to abort….

The evening ended with the wonderful duo of two former bandmates from Australia, Stephen Danger Prescott, the MC, playing with his friend from Melbourne, who sang in German and played a miniature synthesizer. This was an act from outer space – well worth watching, at least for a little…. Especially since next week will be Stephen’s last time MCing this great evening after three years – before it continues under the direction of Romain of All the Roads.