Melbourne Open Mics | Brad Spurgeon's Blog

Three Dead Leads and Another Tale of Woe from a Friday in Melbourne

March 26, 2011
bradspurgeon

Friday is not the best night for open mics anywhere in the world. But in Melbourne last night, it turned into a nearly comical search for a grail that would never be found as I followed three leads only to be disappointed three times, each in an odd way.

I had never so far played in an open mic in Melbourne but yesterday I found traces of three possibilities. One in a place called ET’s Hotel in Prahran, another in St. Kilda at a place called Greyhound Hotel, and a third at the Junction Hotel in Newport.

I settled on walking from the F1 circuit to ET’s Hotel, as I judged it would be no more than a 30 minute walk and my phone calls and emails to the organizer had not been answered. In fact, with the telephone calls to the hotel, there was simply no answer. But I thought I could walk there, and then backtrack to St. Kilda’s, which is also near the F1 track.

et's gloom hotel in Melbourne - closed down, no more open mic

So I walked the 30 minutes or so to ET’s Hotel hoping that I would not be let down, but when I arrived I found the worst possible thing: The hotel had turned into an extraterrestrial carcass of a place. It had closed down and been gutted and turned into a construction site. There remained posters outside for shows that had long since past. It was a little eerie. No more open mic at Et’s Hotel!

et's hotel is now a construction site

Out front of the hotel I finally managed to connect with my phone call to the Greyhound Hotel in St. Kilda.

“Hello,” I said to the man who answered, a man with a slight affectation to his voice. “Do you have an open mic tonight?”

“No,” he said. “But we have a drag show.”

I knew that the drag show had nothing to do with drag racing cars, and thanked him very much and decided to move on to trying to contact the third venue. After all, I was not prepared for a drag show, even if I do open myself up to all different kinds of open mics and jam sessions….

So I called up the Junction Hotel with the number I found on an Open Mic venue list on the Internet.

“Hello,” I said to the man who answered. “Do you have an open mic tonight?”

“What? Oh, no. You have the wrong number, I’m afraid.”

“This is not the Junction Hotel?”

“No. You have the wrong number.”

I checked the number and saw I had dialed the number from the Internet correctly.

So end of open mic story for Friday. It made me feel once again just how wonderful it is when I actually DO connect and find a place to play on this adventure. When that happens it feels like the world is easy, the trip is easy, cool, all fits, and life is a ribbon of dream. Meeting with adversity, suddenly I realize how difficult the task can sometimes be to parachute into a country and hope to find a place to play music instantly and every night.

Having said that, the hazards of travel are multiple, and I neglected to mention the one of Thursday night before I went off to perform at the U-Bar and meet Lara. I had spent a very productive day at the track doing interviews with drivers, team directors and other important people. I had used my Zoom Q3 HD video and sound recorder, the same one I use for the video images of this blog.

At the end of this long and productive day and as I prepared to leave the circuit and go and do my open mic and record with the Q3 some of the stuff for this blog, I went to the toilet. Suddenly, without the slightest warning or provocation of any kind at all, my two-month old 250 euro Q3 recorder fell into the toilet bowl. I removed it in 3 seconds flat, no more. I shook out the water and tried to dry it. I ran back to my desk in the media center at the race track – desk C13, which I had hesitated to take that very morning as it had the No. 13 and was therefore bad luck – and I promptly plugged in the recorder to my computer. The computer message read: “USB device malfunction.”

All was lost, a full day’s work, and even my ability to record the coming nights of open mic shows. Unless… I realized that although the Q3 had died through 3 seconds of toilet water exposure, perhaps the 32 gigabyte SD card that held the data had survived. It was 18:10. I did a quick internet search to see if anyone sold the Zoom Q3 HD in Melbourne.

I found a place called Mannys music store. I called them up. They closed at 7 PM. But they had six of the Q3s in stock. I asked how long it would take to get there from Albert Park, where the race takes place. The guy said about an hour with the traffic there was – or 25 minutes if there was no traffic.

I took a cab and kept the man at Manny’s informed of my progress through the interminable traffic and everlasting traffic lights.

“Tell you what,” he said finally when I told him I would be five to ten minutes late. “I will stay here for you. I will wait.”

So I arrived at Manny’s, it was closed, but the staff let me in. I bought the Q3 and I bought a Zoom H2 hand held sound recorder as well in order not to use the Q3 in the paddock. As I paid for the recorder I removed the 32 gig SD card from my pocket that I had taken from the toilet water damaged recorder, and I put it in. Eureka!!!!! My 9 interviews were all intact! I had been saved by Manny’s and by the SD card. Now all I had to do was take the cab back to my hotel, grab my guitar and get to the All Nations U-Bar as soon as possible to not miss my two dates: The open mic, and Lara.

It worked. Isn’t the life of the traveling minstrel full of unexpected barriers, which can all be overcome with a little persistence.

Hope I find a place to play tonight. Already have two dates lined up for the next race, by the way, including an open mic with a 30 minutes slot at Laila’s Cafe & Lounge for the Wednesday, and another 30-minute slot opening for a local band at a TexMex restaurant, which I will post later.

Worldwide Musical Open Mic Adventure Begins Again – Year III

March 25, 2011
bradspurgeon

Last night in Melbourne was the true beginning to my third worldwide musical adventure to the open mics and jam sessions of the planet over the next nine months. My first was in 2009, when I played my guitar and sang in 17 countries, nearly 30 cities and on every continent except Africa (where I did once live and play) and Antarctica (where I do not want to live or play). I did roughly the same adventure last year, and I will probably do even more this year – I think I have 18 countries planned….

The first year I worked on a book about the adventure – which I am still editing down from its initial 1,000 single-spaced pages!!!-; last year I put posts up on this blog about the adventure; and this year I will do the blog again, and I also have another project in mind that may involve linking it all together in a sound and/or image narrative.

But last night showed me that although this is the third year of the adventure – which, by the way, follows the trajectory of the Formula One world championship, that I report on for the International Herald Tribune and New York Times – and for an F1 blog at the NYT and as the About.com F1 guide – it is not just a repetition of the past.

Life changes, things change and move in ways we cannot predict, and last night I realized that this parallel life of playing in musical venues around the world for the third year has new possibilities I had not imagined: Call it a snowball effect, or a building up of experience. Last night I ended up playing again at the All Nations U-Bar open mic at 2 Spencer Street in Melbourne, which I had discovered last year. But I did that in the company of my friend Lara, whom I had met at the Softbelly Bar open mic in the first year of the adventure – and whom I had not seen since (although we maintained a correspondence).

I was a little disappointed with the U-Bar open mic this year because the sound system was horrible, and I performed very early and so probably the atmosphere had not developed into the fabulous, rollicking evening I had discovered the year before. But our impressions change from one year to the next, and I had also noticed that Emily Brown, the very cool woman who had organized and MC’d the show last year was not there. I thought maybe that was the problem.

I suggested to Lara that we leave and go somewhere quiet and have a drink and talk. And as we left and crossed a nearby street, I heard a shout in the distance from a woman.

“Brad!!!!”

I turned back and crossed the street to find that it was Emily, and she had recognized me out in the dark road as she returned to the U-Bar where she still IS the MC, although someone else was briefly filling in for her last night. She asked me if I had played yet, and I said I had. She said that she was bringing along a Latin music band to do the second part of the evening, and I thought, there we go – the open mic evening probably would turn out to be as good as it was last year. I had simply not given it enough time.

But most of all, I was delighted at how Emily had recognized me, a year later in the dark and slightly rainy street in Melbourne. (Yes, the weather is crap.) It gave me the sense of having musical friends around the world thanks to this adventure. And there I was, of course, with Lara from two years before. Melbourne was feeling like one of my many homes!

I decided to continue on to another bar with Lara, so we went to the Softbelly bar on Little Bourke Street, where we had met at the open mic on the Wednesday before the F1 race in 2009. I did some advance work this year and wrote to the organizer of the Softbelly open mic and found that it no longer exists…. Until we got there and Lara noticed a little poster that said there IS an open mic at the Softbelly on Wednesdays, starting at 7 PM – but it obviously has a different organizer.

I think part of the reason I did not feel quite so good at the U-Bar was also, in fact, because of Lara’s presence. Having her there made me very nervous when I sang my songs, as she had arrived only around 10 minutes before I had to sing, and I was terribly self-conscious all of a sudden about singing in front of the beautiful Lara and letting her down. (As it turned out, I need not have been too worried, as I received some compliments from a couple of people – as well as from Lara – on my four-song set afterward, as Lara and I left the bar.)

But I also had the terrible task of deciding if I should sing the song, called “Lara, Lara” – that I had written for her two years ago. Could I really do it in public here in front of all these people – for there was a fairly decent number of clients at the All Nations U-Bar. I decided I would not sing her song for fear of embarrassing her. But later on I realized I had made a mistake.

Here is the recording I did of “Lara, Lara” in 2009:

So it was that when we sat in the U-Bar and talked, I mentioned that I had considered singing the song and I could see she would have liked that. So I decided that we had to find a secluded alley somewhere and I would sing her the song, as she had pointed out she had never heard me sing it for her live.

We crossed the street from the Softbelly and found a perfect secluded alley where there were no private residences. Together we sang there for probably close to an hour. We went through a large part of my cover song repertoire and a few of my own songs, including Lara, Lara – which was the first I sang. Together we also sang “Cat’s In the Cradle,” which of course was the subject of yesterday’s post…. Lara’s voice was magic; her musical talents and skills are well developed as she has many years’ worth of training on the violin.

So this was an amazing first musical evening in Melbourne, the first true day of my new adventure, and it was made new and unusual by the fact that it was Year III of the adventure and there is a building up of connections and friends and situations.

The only problem was that I managed to do only two videos of the U-Bar open mic, and only one of these is in any way worth putting on the site. I do a panoramic turn around the bar with the camera, and I particularly like the painted mural on the wall that you see near the end of the short video.

Empress Hotel Open Mic, Melbourne

March 31, 2010
bradspurgeon

Sounds grand, this “Empress Hotel” open mic title. But the rather spacious bar at 714 Nicholson Street, Fitzroy North, Melbourne, is not exactly “grand.” What is fabulous, however, is the coziness of the open mic area, and the wonderfully spacious, yet not too grand, stage. I felt comfortable the instant I arrived tonight in the performance area of the bar. There were guitar cases all over the place, tall round tables with stools, the stage well-lit, the horseshoe-shaped bar in the entry, and another large room off to the side.

Frank Shaw, balding white-haired man with a poneytail, who does the sound stood behind the soundboard, and his partner, Robin, made up the list of the performers for the evening. She is a kind, easy-going woman, just the sort you want and actually run into so often with open mics.

I asked Robin how long the open mic had existed, and she couldn’t tell me. They have been running it for around three years, I believe she said, but she said she was unable to find out how long it had existed but that it was many, many years.

When I say that the area was dreary, in fact, I took a walk down the street to go and eat dinner and as I walked along Nicholson I was suddenly struck by the sight of the buildings in the moonlight and I was reminded of the facades of a cowboy film. It was extraordinary how cowboy wild west the buildings looked, but mainly compared to the usual facades I am now used to in Paris. This cowboy facade look is something I equate also with many of the building fronts in Toronto, particularly along Yonge Street near Bloor Street, for example.

I later spoke to a client who equated it with colonial architecture. “All the colonies were a little alike, I suppose,” she said. And I agreed.

Unfortunately I missed the beginning of the evening, which started at 8:30, because of the pizza. But the look around town was worth it, and as I went for the pizza I passed a hotel bar that had some kind of sign in the window talking about not wanting to kill music.

I noticed the sign, but did not read it and it was only later in the evening – at the end of the open mic – that the subject came up. Robin told me that there was a big political problem in Melbourne at the moment involving live music and liquor licenses, and that it was killing live music.

I’ll have to look into it, but at the moment that is all I know about it, and also the fact that Robin said that the hotel bar where I had seen the sign was the center of the beginning of this political problem.

In any case, live music was certainly alive at the Empress Hotel open mic, as the level of musician was again good, and the atmosphere was fabulously laid back and comfortable. The first act that I saw was a woman in her thirties – I suspect – whose name I did not hear, but whose singing was very folksie 1960s like. I enjoyed it immensely.

I also liked another woman, this was Melody Moon, who later told me that this was her first open mic. Her voice was dynamic and unique, and I told her afterwards that I thought she had her own sound. Upon listening to the video recording, however, I realized that it reminded me a little of a singer popular at the moment whose name entirely escapes me, but who I will mention as soon as I remember! (That’s one of the nice things about a blog – you can update the stories as you please.)

Melody had a very beautiful voice and an agreeable execution and some clever lyrics that could be interpreted in several ways. She also had good direct communication with the audience as she tried to involve them in whistling in the middle of one of her three songs. Her guitar playing was far from smooth, but she made a good effort at it, not using simple chords and chord shapes, but employing much of the neck of the guitar.

A man whose name escapes me too also had an interesting act, with good solid rhythm guitar playing and a voice he really knew how to sing with. Unfortunately for my tastes, all three of his songs sounded a little like the soppy, obligatory and conventional slow songs of heavy metal bands, both in sentiment and sound. So I didn’t really turn on to it in the end.

This is comedy festival month in Melbourne, and that means most venues are taken up by comedy acts for the festival. It was therefore fitting that a guy came up to perform comedy, even on this musical open mic night. He was clearly a beginner and he was trying out new material that was so new he kept referring to his notes about it. But he had an agreeable easy way about him, and his humor was light and agreeable. He actually started with a little skit about the Formula One race being in town and how he hadn’t realized it until he turned on his TV for a basketball game and all he got was the F1. Then he complained about the jets flying over during the race….

In any case, it turned out that this comedian, who had everyone laughing – including me – if only lightly rather than gut laughs, and who had lightened up the atmosphere considerably, was the act immediately before me.

There had been some dreary, horrible, sleep-inducing acts of people who still need to learn how to walk before they can run – ie, it was not entirely clear why they sought an audience just yet, as they had a lot of learning to do with both guitar and singing. In fact, Frank Shaw decided to sit down and recite some kind of children’s story between acts at one point, perhaps to liven things up at that moment – I cannot remember exactly. But I liked the moment, so I caught a little of it on video, as you can see below.

So the comedian’s act really lightened up the environment. In fact, it lightened it up so much, and lightened me up so much, that I felt thoroughly out of shape for singing my songs in the mood an feeling they require.

“Well, thanks,” I said. “That’s the first time that has happened to me. I get to go up after a comedian. Now that we’re all lightened up. I’m going to have to change my whole set list now. I was going to sing a bunch of depressing songs….”

That actually got a good laugh out of them, and suddenly I thought I should be doing my own comedy act. But I did decide to change my set list of three songs. I had planned on starting with Harry Chapin’s “Cat’s in the Cradle.” But right after a comic, I couldn’t see how I could enter that world.

So I gave in and quit and decided to sing the song I had decided I definitely would NOT sing: “Crazy Love.”

The audience helped me try to get into the idea of singing – “Come on, you can do it!” after I had joked about tackling the change in tone after the comedian.

So I sang Crazy Love, did a half okay job. Then I took another swig of beer and decided to try out the Chapin song.

“I can’t remember now if the capo goes on the seventh fret or the eighth fret,” I said. “That has to do with age….”

That was not a comedian’s line, but one related to the song about a father and his son growing up without him seeing it because life passes you by.

It went well and by then I’d warmed myself up with Crazy Love.

I then sang my song to finish it all off, the song called, “Memories,” about the time with my wife. That received wonderful applause and I was happy with the singing and playing, particularly because the sound system was so perfect here – even with a little reverb added on the voice to warm it up. In fact, it all seemed to go down so well that for the second day running the audience called for more, giving me a warm, heartfelt encore.

I was delighted, and couldn’t believe it. And this time I was determined to do something other than “Jealous Guy.”

“Another cover?” I said. “How about a Dylan?”

“Yeah! A Dylan!” people said.

So I did “Just Like a Woman.” And I was in seventh heaven yet again when I heard the audience singing along with me on the song. Wow.

A great way to end the trip to Australia.

The Arthouse Open Mic in Melbourne

March 30, 2010
bradspurgeon

I heard about the Arthouse open mic from a couple of different sources, and my curiosity was wetted and very high. Monday night around the world tends to be one of the big nights for open mics, as it also tends to be one of the down nights for the bar business in general.

The Arthouse came recommended on one of the good sites I used to look up venues in Melbourne, a site called Skinhat. But it also came up last Friday when I sent out an SOS on my Facebook page: “Pissed off there’s no open mics in Melbourne on Friday from what I can see. Still, allows me to finally have the time to put new strings on my guitar in my hotel room.”

My friend Emma Wilson, who runs the River Bar open mic in London, put up a call for anyone on her Facebook to provide me with a place if they new of anything. Someone came up with the suggestion for the Arthouse open mic on Monday.

So it was clear that here was an open mic that is well-known in Melbourne, and I resolved to go. Located at 616 Elizabeth Street, the Arthouse turned out to be only about 35 minutes walk from my hotel, although I took a couple of trams to get there. The area around it is pretty deserted and dreary, I found, but the bar itself is very cool. And when I walked in to find this massive stage – for an open mic – with beautiful lighting and mics and amps all over the place, I felt very blissful.

What I liked less was that there were very few people there when I arrived at the ostensible starting time at 8 PM, as I read on another site. In fact, it turned out that it started at more like 9 PM. But that gave me a chance to put my name on the list and leave to find a place to eat – I ended up at a Korean BBQ place that was so good and authentic that I thought I was in Japan, or Korea rather….

When I returned to the Arthouse, I found a few more people, but it was still terribly deserted by comparison to the All Nations bar open mic I attended on Thursday. In fact, it was a terrible letdown. Fortunately, however, as the evening progressed I would find not only that the quality of the musicians who had signed up was high, but that the rest of the people present were fun and interesting, and above all, most importantly, a wonderful, appreciative audience. In fact, I was massively delighted to receive an encore once I’d finished my three songs.

I first sang “Crazy Love,” and then I sang “Father and Son,” and then I sang my own song, “Since You Left Me.” Much to my surprise and delight, it was with my song that some people actually got up on the dance floor and started to slow dance and listen to me very closely and with smiles. Wow. When I finished my three songs and said goodbye, they said, “No!! Don’t leave!!” And then they said, “Encore!” I was taken by surprise and the best I could think of to do – after checking with Tim Chelow, the organizer, that it was O.K. to do another – was John Lennon’s “Jealous Guy.” I think it went over O.K., though.

I actually recorded myself for the first time with my Q3 Zoom recorder. But unfortunately my whole set lasted 20 minutes – including setting up the guitar – and that is far too long to put on this site. And I do not yet have adequate software to cut and splice the cool part out – ie, the encore….

I will put up a couple of snippets of a couple of other musicians though, because that’s what this blog is really meant to be all about – talking about the people who attend open mics all around the world.

All the tables were full in front of the stage, even though there were only around 20 people in the place at most, and I did not want to sit far back in the room, so I sat down at a table of a woman with a guitar. It turned out that she would be probably the best musician and singer there, and her name was Bel Woods. She came from a small town a few hours outside of Sydney, and she told me she had come to Melbourne two months ago to basically work on her music.

It was clear very quickly that she admired Tori Amos. In fact, it was quite amazing that Bel not only looked a lot like Tori, but her voice sounded a lot like hers as well. I did pick up a few touches of Joni Mitchell, too, however. But Bel said she didn’t particularly listen to Joni.

The other musician I liked a lot was Tim Chelow, the guy who has run the open mic for the last two or three years, although it has existed for nearly 19 years. He also took to the stage and played some interesting acoustic guitar, of which I’ll put up a little excerpt. What was funny about this was that his music sounded very laid back and sort of classically folk-like. But he said normally his greatest interest is heavy metal. We would talk later on as many of the young people gathered on the terrace on the second floor after the open mic finished and there we talked for an hour or so about everything from religion, mysticism and heavy metal music to boyfriend/girlfriend relationships where the couples either couldn’t stand each other or were not apparently made for each other, but stayed together.

The heavy metal connection, it turned out, was also appropriate for the Arthouse. I found out that the Arthouse has been a center for independent music for 19 years, and is mostly known for its heavy metal bands, as you can see in an article in The Age where it was called, “one of Melbourne’s stalwart homes of metal.”

Well, last night it was far from metal, and it never filled up. But Bel told me that she was told that it had a tendency to be either full up and bursting with people, or rather dead, as it was last night. Come to think of it, that’s pretty much like most open mics around the world.

No Mic Today, My Love Has Gone Away

March 26, 2010
bradspurgeon

Remember that song from Herman’s Hermits? Well, all right, I changed a word in my headline for this post, of course. Same difference.

I could not find an open mic in Melbourne tonight, so I just took the opportunity to restring my guitar. I’d been wanting to do that for weeks, but never had the time. Then I decided also to play a song in my room, as I did in Bahrain. But this time, used my handy Zoom Q3 recorder to record it, and not my interview recorder as I did in Bahrain.

I went ALL over the hotel room tonight trying to find the right angle to get enough light and some kind of backdrop but all I could come up with was the washroom, and I figured that was tasteless. So I decided to record the song in the nearly complete darkness of the bad light available, because, after all, that suits mood of the song, which is Mad World. I’ll put the video up tomorrow after it finishes processing in about an hour…. when I’ll be long since asleep.

All Nations Hostel U-Bar Open Mic Melbourne

March 25, 2010
bradspurgeon

Don’t bother trying to figure out the real order of the words of the headline I put on this post. Just go to 2 Spencer Street in Melbourne, Australia, on a Thursday night. There you will find one of the coolest open mics down under, I’m sure of that. I am the happiest man alive after showing up there tonight and playing my three songs and listening to the other open mic singers and the house band.

And it proved a thing to me again: Go off the beaten path, break your habits, try something new, force yourself! Last year on the Thursday of the Formula One weekend I played in the open mic of the Spleen Bar on Bourke Street. So being like most people a man of habit, I decided to try it out again this time.

But then life got in the way – thank goodness! I ended up staying late at the track, well not that late, but until 7 PM. And could not find any indication that the Spleen Bar was still doing its musical open mic night. And this being Comedy Festival month in Melbourne and the Softbelly having canceled its musical open mic, I feared the Spleen might have canceled its musical open mic too, since the Spleen is more known for its comedy open mics on Monday or Tuesday (can’t remember which).

So it was that I stumbled across this open mic announced for the U-Bar at the All Nations Hostel on 2 Spencer street. It looked pretty certain to be happening, and on my way back from the track, I happened to find it on the corner of Spencer street where I got off the tram and where I had to head uptown on another tram to my hotel. According to the Internet it would start at 8 PM, and I was there at 7:40 or so. So I popped into what looked like a dreary bar with few people in it, and I asked if there was an open mic.

“Yes, it starts at nine,” I was told by a young man behind the bar.

The walls were painted graffiti-like with strange cartoon drawings and other graffiti-art like stuff. Very colorful, but my main impression was of potential dreariness. And I noticed a crappy looking amplifier against a wall near the bar and the pool table. It looked as if the open mic would be an afterthought.

But it was so late I decided I had no choice but to take the tram to the hotel and then return to the bar, since I now had plenty of time as it started at nine, not eight.

Returned to the hotel, warmed up my voice with a song on the guitar – ‘Father and Son’ – and then ate a very quick meal at the buffet in the hotel before taking a tram back down to the U-Bar or whatever it was called.

Went into the place to find a lot of people and a dreary, quiet singer at the dreary amp. I was guided by the bartender to a woman named Emily Brown, and told she ran the open mic. There was so much talking in the bar that I could barely hear the singer or Emily. But I gave her my name and she said she’d get me up. “Three songs each,” she said.

Turned out to be a nice crowd of young people, and very international. That clearly had to do with the hostel next door. I spoke to a Dutchman, and one of the performers was from Canada. A man named Brandon, who was from Burlington and there with his girlfriend as they were spending a year in Australia traveling all over the country.

Emily reminded me instantly of Bea, the 23-year-old woman from Sydney who ran the Softbelly open mic last year. I would learn that Emily was 22 years old, she had studied music at “uni” and she had run the open mic here since last August or so. She also had a band that would play in the middle of the open mic evening for a full one hour or so set. She taught singing in the Melbourne school system and also had a few other music gigs to keep her going. She was very enthusiastic and friendly. This was classic open mic stuff here!

And guess what? The music just got better and better, and the crowd got thicker and thicker and the atmosphere just grew stronger and stronger. Sure, there would be talking throughout the night, and there would be some people playing on the pool table, and you would have to move aside while singing a song to occasionally let the man hit the pool ball because the performer was too close to the table. Oh, and the sound system was indeed crap.

But this would prove to be so much fun, with such an eclectic group of musicians, mostly young, that I was very quickly persuaded that it had a real atmosphere. Several of the musicians came from local bands, too, and played acoustic for fun. A lot of what I learned about the evening came from a couple of the musicians, one named Jim, and the other named…Jim.

One of the Jims described the other Jim’s music as being very eclectic, and he asked me if I’d ever heard of his hero.

“Who’s that?” I asked.

“Townes.”

I expected him to say, “Townes Van Zandt,” but decided to get him to say it.

“Who?”

“Townes Van Zandt.”

“Yeah,” I said. And the other Jim was surprised.

“What do you think of him,” asked the Jim who sang Townes’s songs.

“A genius,” I said. To which the other Jim just walked away in disgust and let us talk about Townes Van Zandt.

So it was cool indeed to be in Australia talking about Townes Van Zandt.

The Canadian Brandon played some blues of his own making, and had a nice strong voice and a nice fingerpicking style. A local rock musician who had given out his self-produced record played three or four songs that were fast moving and hard hitting, and perfect for the crowd. And he showed a wonderful attitude as several drunks joined him during his song and he stopped and spoke to them and at one point said:

“I’d like to introduce you to my band, I don’t even know their names, but here they are.”

I did not have to wait very long before I went up, in fact, I went up after that guy. I had planned to play Van Morrison’s “Crazy Love,” a song of my own, and Cat Steven’s “Father and Son.” But in the end, given how much noise there was and how the crowd felt, I did not do my own song, but instead did “Just Like a Woman,” by Bob Dylan.

It was one of those evenings where you wonder how much you’re really reaching people. But when both of the Jims told me afterwards how much they loved my songs, especially the Cat Stevens, I knew I had reached the people. In fact, one of the Jims actually gave me the biggest compliment I ever had with “Father and Son.”

“I was just saying to Jim,” said Jim, “that I actually liked your version of ‘Father and Song’ more than the original.”

No compliment can be better.

The singers varied a lot, from rocking to quiet and from singing originals to singing covers. One of them who got up just before Emily’s band was in fact the guitar player from her band, and he sang some very nice covers quietly but strongly.

And now to Emily’s band, called “My Favourite Emily.” This was fabulous. Emily sang, she had a female bass player, she had a 23-year old sax player who Jim told me had begun to play at age eight, and she had a drummer and the guitar player. They had some very nice jazzy stuff, and the sax player blew me away. I loved Emily’s voice too. I made videos all night with my new Zoom Q3 toy, and I will post something here:

In addition to the great musicality of the band, Emily had a nice way of communicating with the audience, and she frequently went into the crowd to get some audience participation in the songs – ie, holding the mic up to spectators to sing along.

Oh yeah, and Emily told me she took a couple of photos of me and will put them up on the open mic’s Facebook page, so I’ll link to them as soon as I see them.

This was a very moving, swinging, cool and hip open mic format, and Emily was all the things a great open mic host should be: Friendly, encouraging, nice, warm and enthusiastic. And on top of it, she is a talented musician herself. I’ll go back again – unless my desire to break all habits gets me finding another place on Thursday in Melbourne next year….

Arrival in Melbourne, Softbelly Cancelled

March 24, 2010
bradspurgeon

I am writing these words from my hotel in Melbourne while eating fish and chips from room service and drinking a wine that has a classic old Formula One team name to it: Tyrrell’s Wines. I’m feeling a little bit down because I learned shortly before arriving here that the cool open mic at the Softbelly bar on Little Bourke Street that I attended last year on the Wednesday evening has been canceled tonight because of the standup comedy festival this week. On the other hand, the complete trip from Paris – via Malaysia – consisted of 25 hours of travel time, and four hours sleep. So I can probably consider myself lucky that I was not tempted to run out to the Softbelly tonight, after all. Onward tomorrow to some new adventure – perhaps the Spleen Bar open mic on Bourke Street (not Little Bourke) where I also played last year….