MANAMA, Bahrain – My worldwide open mic journey began in China in 2008 after the Formula One race in Shanghai, and little did I know that it was a journey that would continue for six more years and cover most of the globe, every continent except Africa (where I once lived and played music in an open mic decades earlier) and Antarctica, and that it would spawn a book, a blog, an album, a documentary film, numerous podcasts, music videos and other multimedia projects.
This year, 2014, I have decided to finish all of the projects and tie them together into a consolidation of multimedia. As part of my personal impetus to gather it all together for myself, but also put it into perspective on this blog, I have decided to create a page for each city I have visited on the journey, tying together samples of the whole multimedia adventure linked to that city.
MANAMA, Bahrain – Second night in a row of playing in an open jam at a bar in Bahrain last night made up for the two previous barren nights in the desert. And last night was worth the wait: A jam at the Club Buffalo bar in the basement of the Ramee California Hotel.
I had not heard of this one before, for the good reason that it had not yet existed when I was in Bahrain last year. It was the same night, in fact, Sunday night, where I had a very bad experience last year at another open jam night, so I went to the Buffalo Club a little wary about another bad experience, even though it was not the same hotel or bar at all. My fears were allayed the instant I entered the bar when one of the band members approached me immediately upon seeing my guitar and asked if I was there to jam.
So I was put on the list and got to play as the first jammer of the second set of the band – i.e., when the jam proper begins. Saturday night I was really hyped up about playing solo for the first time at the Dublin Club, but last night, I was hot on the idea of playing with the band. It just felt so welcoming, I felt that any mess I might make of it would pass off without a frown.
In the end, it was great, as I started with Mad World and then did Wicked Game, and much to my surprise, the former turned out to go better than the latter, despite that Wicked Game on has three chords! But both went well, and I enjoyed singing on this cool large stage with a good sound system, with a bass player, keyboard player, drummer and lead guitar player. I used the house acoustic Takamine guitar, and that was just fine too.
The other musicians of the jam were really good, ranging from a guy who did blues on an acoustic guitar to another singing Michael Jackson, and another an African with some really fine guitar playing with a sort of World Music edge to it. After I saw these people, I was very relieved to have been the first performer of the jam, or I might have had a bigger dose of stage fright than I did.
The house band was quite together, and often the three singers – two women and a guy – added backing vocals from the wings as jammers played. They call it a jam, but it’s pretty much an open mic, open jam kind of thing – it seems just about anything goes. I was given the OK to do a solo bit before doing the song with the band, but I just opted to play with the band, as I said.
The bar has a Wild West theme to it, which is where that Buffalo thing comes in, and it is shaped a little like some kind of coral or some other Western style setup, with the stage in the center and the tables in a kind of circular surround of the stage and its dance floor in front. It was not as packed tight as the Dublin Club always seems to be, but this was a night and respectably sized audience.
In all, I had an excellent weekend playing music in Bahrain. I still long to find something outside the expat hotel scene, though. But it’s not the easiest country to navigate and explore in terms of the local culture while being there in fact to cover a Formula One race…. Excuses, excuses….
P.S. And speaking of excuses, I had so much I wanted to get up on the blog about Bahrain – including a post coming up tomorrow – that I decided I could not wait to arrive in Paris to do so, and I since I am on a long flight back on an Emirates Airlines place, I knew I could have no excuses and decided to buy a bit of the onboard wifi time – so that’s where this item is coming from, 30,000 feet above the Gulf….
MANAMA, Bahrain – Last night you can imagine how my juices started churning at the Dublin Club jam session in Bahrain when suddenly the band left the stage and a guy went up with an acoustic guitar and played solo! I had nothing against this very cool new house band, called Generation – made of a bunch of Canadians and I guess others – but my repertoire contains few cover songs that are good for jumping onstage and jamming to with a band that may or may not know them. (Even when they do know them, I tend to do them my way and throw everyone off!) And what it was, was that this was the first time in my experience at the Dublin Club jam on Saturday nights in Bahrain that they accepted solo, singer-songwriter kinds of people.
So I immediately went after the band member organizing the jam and I asked if I could do just guitar and vocals, and she said, “Yes, of course.” So it was that in the second set at one point after some moving rocking jamming I took to the stage and played Cat Stevens’ “Father and Son,” using the band’s acoustic guitar (which threw me off a bit because I’m not used to playing an acoustic with a strap that places the guitar at the level of my knees instead of my chest (I’m uncool on that, I know)). And then to my great surprise, I got an encore! (Usually you just play one song, and wait till your turn comes around again maybe in the next set.) So I did my own song, “Borderline.”
It was very very cool. This Dublin Club jam has been going on for years, and each year I have come to play it has been run by a different band. I suspect – but did not push my luck by asking – that if they are now allowing acoustic solo stuff, it’s because Generation is just more open to anything than their predecessors.
It’s a crazy, wild Irish pub kind of place, and it is well populated by local expats, some local locals or nearby locals from nearby countries, and also by American military personnel from the local 5th Fleet. All of which means a crowd that is really hungry for music – of any kind. I’m usually afraid of doing acoustic after romping electric full band. But this crowd takes it as it comes, and it all worked out. I’ll be back!!!! (I hope.)
MANAMA, Bahrain – My worldwide open mic journey began in China in 2008 after the Formula One race in Shanghai, and little did I know that it was a journey that would continue for six more years and cover most of the globe, every continent except Africa (where I once lived and played music in an open mic decades earlier) and Antarctica, and that it would spawn a book, a blog, an album, a documentary film, numerous podcasts, music videos and other multimedia projects. 