The Highlander | Brad Spurgeon's Blog

Four Years of Highlander, and an Annual Open Mic at the Copains Bar in Paris

October 1, 2010
bradspurgeon

Missed a day on the blog, but went out both Wednesday and Thursday to open mics – as usual. The first was one of the usual Wednesday places I have written about so often, but this time there’s news! It was the fourth anniversary of The Highlander’s open mic on Wednesday, and Thomas Brun had balloons and other party decorations hanging from the walls and ceiling, and he greeted people – well, me, in any case – with: “Happy Birthday!”

Four years for an open mic is a long time, I have begun to learn, as I have traveled the world and found simply from last year to this year a huge number of open mics have closed down, while others have opened.

Highlights at the Highlander were a new guy from the United States who has just moved to Paris and who calls himself, Glass Petals, and another woman singer, named Megg Farrell, who is also from the U.S., and who played with a ukelele and sang. But unlike so many of the young women I see these days playing the uke and singing, she really made the uke sing and got the crowd stomping along with her strong voice. It was a high moment.

On Thursday I went to Isabelle Sojfer‘s open mic at the Copains bar in Menilmontant. This is a tiny hole-in-the wall bar with a very big friendly atmosphere once the night gets going. And last night it REALLY got going. Isabelle Sofjer is an author, slam artist and…ukelele player and singer. I have seen her at two different open mics, and I learned that she has her own open mic once a year. So I went last night to the annual edition not only to find that it was just full of performers and quite wild and warm, but also to discover – with everyone else – that she would be holding the open mic again in two weeks, on 14 October, exceptionally running a second time in the same year.

Isabelle does not run the open mic the same way as most people, and while I was a little upset as the first performer to be invited to leave the “stage” after only one song – “Borderline” – I soon discovered that everyone had only one chance. Well, at least in the first round. She did a second round and all the remaining people got to do another number. I decided that since the bar was so small I would not use a microphone, and that enabled me to succeed for the first time ever in public in doing a half-decent job of my interpretation of the Hank Williams song, “I’m So Lonesome I Could Cry.” I do it with a pretty strong blues approach. The bar owner, Momo, jumped up and started playing a bongo drum with me and it turned out to be quite a powerful moment, I think.

On the other hand, there were only about four musicians throughout the evening, and the accent was on slam poetry. So the music was no doubt happily received as a break from the slam….

Last of a dead month in August in Paris with Danger at the highlander

August 25, 2010
bradspurgeon

Just a quick item before I travel on to explore musical Liege over the weekend as I attend the Belgian Grand Prix for my IHT and NYT coverage. I just wanted to wrap up the Paris August blues with a note about last Monday when I went back to the Tennessee Bar and The Galway, the fabulous venues that dared stay open all month.

I made a fool of myself at the Tennessee by singing my new song that was not yet finished and which I had not memorized – so read from a piece of paper that fell from my knee just before the bridge. But then went on to the Galway and sang four songs in what felt like an inspired manner, and that was confirmed by friendly comments afterwards. One of those comments came from Stephen “Danger” Prescott, formerly of the Salvation Army punk band, and now the MC of the Galway. This is the same Stephen “Danger” Prescott” that I mentioned who had turned up at the Highlander the previous week or so before in order to perform just like any member of the public, which I found extraordinary for this Australian from Melbourne who has lived in Paris for the last three or more years, playing every week at the Galway as the MC. But there was something very different about his act at the Highlander, and I was greatly amused at how he told me from behind the mic NOT to use the video, given his state of…. well, you’ll see. He gave me permission on Monday, noting that it was all in good fun and not a typical night for him. And it really wasn’t his fault, either, as a client bought him that huge jug of beer…..

Highlander Meets Galway, Another Mid-August Night in Paris

August 12, 2010
bradspurgeon

On Monday I said thank goodness both the Tennessee Bar and the Galway Pub were holding their usual open mics despite the August holiday in Paris where the French disappear. Another of the stalwart open mics continued on Wednesday, with the Highlander Pub remaining open and entertaining with its open mic.

It was a usual evening at the Highlander, with a good mixture of crap and great stuff. One of the problems with the Highlander open mic is that it is so popular that you really have to get there at close after 8 PM to be among the first performers on the list and not have to wait until after midnight to play. I dragged my feet so badly last night at home that I ended up not getting to the Highlander until around 10 PM. I thought I was doomed in terms of when I might get a chance to play. Then, much to my amazement, Thomas Brun, the organizer, came up to me within minutes of my arrival, and he said, “I’ve had someone pulling out at the last minute, so you can go up next if you want.”

Wow! I had just bought a pint of beer and the shot of adrenaline was so strong that I said “yes” very quickly and then drank as much of the beer as I could as quickly as I could, since I knew that I had only about one more song to listen to of the performer who was singing, before I would have to go up and sing. It was so rushed that I was not mentally prepared. Needed the beer to calm the nerves. But I’d rather that than wait until nearly 1 AM to play.

The other down side, though, was that the singer was Etienne, whom I mentioned a few weeks ago played at the Galway and was fabulous. And here he was blowing them all away at The Highlander too, with high adrenaline, hard played chords and sandpapery voice striking right to the heart. What the hell could I do after that overdrive performance? I elected to go soft and cool, and sang “Jealous Guy.” Then did one of my own, then another of my own. I survived, the audience did too. All was well.

I then spent until midnight or afterwards listening to most of the other performers, so in a way I didn’t really save myself much time after all. But I enjoyed it, and there was a kind of a feeling of a theme here. For while Etienne was the first, he was far from the last of the performers that I saw at the Galway, again playing here. For example, there was the Dutch (and French) woman I have mentioned – and showed a video of – in my Galway post recently (which she asked to be removed years later). And after her, by the time I got near the end of my stay there, it turned out that even the MC of the Galway, the Australian from Melbourne, Stephen Prescott, decided he would go up and play a few songs for fun. In fact, his fun was so much fun – carousing fun – that while I was recording it on video in stealth behind a pillar near the door so neither he nor anyone else would really notice the candid camera, Stephen stopped singing for a moment and turned my way and said, “Brad, don’t put this up on your blog, I’m….”

Well, all right, I left the last word out. And I have decided not to. But I’ve got the evidence, Stephen. So next time I go to the Galway, if you don’t want the world to see it – let me on early there too, no matter what time I show up.

But seriously, I love it when I see an MC from an open mic show up to do another open mic two days later, as a performer. This is devotion, passion, fun.

The Euks go to the Highlander and the Cavern

June 17, 2010
bradspurgeon

I wrote a while ago about the Wednesday night neighboring open mics in Paris, The Highlander and The Cavern. The Cavern is not exactly an open mic in the sense of most I write about here, because the venue provides a live band and the guest just goes up to sing a song with the band.

That last time I wrote about how I chickened out singing at the Cavern, although I’d sung there once before. This time, I did not chicken out, and that was thanks to my sense of pride. You see, I went to both of these open mics with my son, Paul, and his band The Euks, which I also wrote about here in the past. The Euks consists of my son and three of his friends, Antoine, Vincent and Sébastien, and they were looking for a place to play in public with the band for the first time. They knew about the Highlander and I said I’d join them if they didn’t mind. They also brought their friend Calvin, who writes some good songs too and sings solo. So we all went to the Highlander, and The Euks made its debut, and Calvin sung some songs, and I sang some songs, and then we all went off to celebrate at The Cavern.

Now the Cavern usually has some very, very hot singers who get up behind the microphone. In fact, that is the norm, and it’s one thing that bothers me about the place, because although it is called an open vocale jam, and it really is open to anyone, most people are scared shitless to get up and sing because the quality is professional, and very high. Well last night, Calvin and Antoine went up as the first volunteers of the night and sang a French rock song that Calvin said he had never heard before! They both had great fun, and I think the audience did too.

But then up went a fabulous singer who sang a George Benson song with the band, and this guy was your typical pro at The Cavern. Scared the life out of everyone. We had to catch the last Métro anyway, so all got up to leave. But I could not accept that my son’s friends went up on stage and sang at the Cavern and that I would not do the same out of fear and the knowledge that I’m lost at sea when I sing with a band without my guitar in my hands. So I decided to get up and sing “Stand By Me,” which is the only song on the band’s set list that I sing with my own set list.

I did it, and I made a fairly big mess out of it. But at least I did it. And the genial guitarist, Rémi de Coudenhove, agreed with me in advance that it was indeed difficult to sing alone with a band if you’re used to doing it with a guitar in your hands.

But the most important part of the night was that Calvin played some of his songs, including a nice new one, and The Euks had their public debut. It went very well, even considering that they are an electric band and they had to play acoustic and didn’t even have the drum set. They all agreed that it was a good workout.

The Highlander and The Cavern, Paris’s Musical Neighbors

April 30, 2010
bradspurgeon

These two musical venues located about three minutes apart in Paris’s Latin Quarter could hardly be different in their approaches to the open mic and jam format. But they both have open evenings on Wednesday, and if you balance it right and if your musical ability and style suits both formats, you can play in both locations.

I went to both of them on Wednesday, as I often do. The Highlander is one of the longstanding open mics of the Paris scene, and it is perhaps the second place I played in during my return to the open mic scene in the fall of 2008 after a hiatus of several decades. Since I’ve been going the show has been run by Thomas Brun, a French musician who lived in the United States for a while and speaks and sings perfect English. He always does a three or four song act to begin the evening at 9:00 PM and warm up the audience. If you’re like me, though, you might not feel very good playing your set after him if you have not mastered all the electronic gadgets he uses in order to have looping, fuzz, etc., and make his set sound like it was done by a full band. After that a single voice and mediocre guitar sounds pretty empty.

On the other hand, ultimately, nothing much matters at the Highlander. It is always full of young people, it is well designed, a Scottish pub with both the ground floor and a basement room for watching live sports on a big screen, and the atmosphere is warm and intimate. The problem, however, is that in all the open mics that I have done around the whole world in the last year and a half – on every continent except Antarctica and Africa (although I did one in Africa many years ago) – I think that I must elect the open mic at The Highlander Pub as having the loudest, least respectful audience of any in the world. It does not matter how good a performance is, the audience will chatter and yell and laugh and carry on as if there was no musician. No, not EVERYONE in the audience. But a much larger percentage of people than what I have seen anywhere else. It is consistently loud. The only time a musician tends to break through a little to the audience is with a loud, roudy song. Do I care? Not much. I accept The Highlander for what it is, and the secret, as ever, is to play for oneself. On Wednesday, I must say that I did see a lot of people who listened closely to my songs – “Jealous Guy,” “Just Like A Woman,” and my own song, “Since You Left Me.” So that was nice.

I met and listened to and recorded a few people there whom I know, like Mat Hilde, and Sven Cosnuau.

Another problem with The Highlander is that it is so popular with musicians that you have to arrive very, very early in order to get a good spot. The first night I went there I arrived just after 9:00 PM and I had to wait until 00:20 before I went up to play – and by then everyone was gone. I seem to have some kind of curse hanging over me, though, because it seems no matter how hard I try to arrive by, say, 8:30, I still arrive at 9:00 PM, and last Wednesday was no exception. Two delayed metros and one long walk between metros and the walk from the Odéon Metro to The Highlander all meant that I arrived at about 9:05. I was lucky this time, though. I managed to sign up as ninth on the list. And that meant that by before 11 PM I was up and performing. I was ecstatic!

My happiness was based not only on the lack of pre-set burnout that a wait of several hours can cause, but also because I knew that I would be able to go to The Cavern, around the corner on the Rue Dauphine, within a good period of time. The great thing is that the Cavern open vocal jam starts at 10:30 PM and ends somewhere around 2 AM. So that meant plenty of time to get there.

I arrived at the Cavern unsure of whether I would go up and perform, however. The truth is, I am incredibly intimidated by this format of jam. First, let me describe a little the venue: A bar on street level leads to a winding staircase at the back and you descend that in the darkness into a stone walled, arch ceilinged tunnel – although there is a kind of “house of horrors” cage to the immediate left of the tunnel where I often expect to see either a corpse hanging by a rope or a Go Go Dancer…. Anyway, you go through the tunnel and you arrive in the Cavern. There is a rear room with tables and low ceiling, and it faces into the main room with the bar along the left side, and the stage at the end that you face as you enter. A projection on the wall to the right lists the events of the coming month, and it sits over the line of tables to the right also, and a table near the main pillar of the room. The room is shaped, of course, a little like the Cavern club The Beatles made famous.

The house band is strong and tight, and the guitar player is the spitting image of the guitarist I met at a band at the Blues Bar in Istanbul last year in a band that plays similar music in a similar format of evening. Weird! Or perhaps that’s part of the zeitgeist of such a group and evening. On the other hand, this Cavern club guitarist is a very hot and smooth player, much more complex than the man in Istanbul, who was an excellent singer and a pretty good guitarist.

The problem with this format for me is that the members of the public are allowed to go up and sing songs with the band, but they are not allowed to bring up their instruments and play and sing. Nor may they do anything outside the band’s set list. IE, if I want to sing a song with the band, I have to look at the list of songs they know, and choose from those. They will provide the lyrics if I need them. Sound familiar? Aside from the fact of this being a live band, we’re talking here about something resembling Karaoke. And I am pretty bad at Karaoke. And I have very little experience playing with bands, and I really prefer to rehearse at least a little bit before I play in front of an audience.

Having said that, I did play on my first visit to the Cavern last year sometime because the band does “Stand By Me,” and that is one of the songs I do myself. Still, I do it slightly differently to the original, and this is one of the things that makes interpreting other people’s music what it is all about: One’s own interpretation should bring something new to a song. (I don’t know if mine does.) But it is a drawback in situations like this kind of jam or even a Karaoke, where the band and soundtrack is the exact replica of the most popular or original version of the song. Then I tend to get lost.

So I have gone several times to the Cavern with the desire to sing, but I have backed out for fear of making a mess of it. Maybe eventually I will break through this and do myself a favor and improve as a performer. But the problem is that while I know by ear and name probably 80 percent of the songs on their set list, I sing only one of them on my own. On Wednesday, however, I decided that maybe I should have a go at Angie, by the Rolling Stones, since I have sung that occasionally with my guitar, but not enough to have it memorized.

In the end, however, I again chickened out. I thought to myself that I just did not know it well enough, and there were some good singers at the Cavern this night. I’ve always been struck by how the singers at the Cavern tend to be of a much higher level on the whole than those at the open mics for singer songwriters. I suspect it has to do with people not daring to get up with a live, professional, tight band to play and sing cover songs if they are not really polished musicians to start with. Having said that, I was well received the time I did “Stand By Me,” and I MUST try something again before too long.

In fact, after leaving the Cavern, I was disappointed with myself and still itching to go on. I walked nearly a kilometer away on my way home when I suddenly about-faced and said, “I MUST sing it….” I started feeling terribly optimistic and strong and as if I had a purpose in life…when suddenly I recalled how I once tried to sing Angie along with the Rolling Stones record, and I was way out of time throughout. So I hailed the first cab and went home to end my evening with a relatively early bedtime – 3 AM, I think it was by the time I finished my nightly ride around the neighborhood….