Thomas Brun | Brad Spurgeon's Blog

Talkin’ Highlander Blues

March 3, 2011
bradspurgeon

Last night it was back to The Highlander open mic again. And I must say, I did not see that much that excited me in the way of wanting to make videos for this site. On the other hand, I did a lot more talking than I usually do at The Highlander, thus falling into the same crime as about 95 percent of the audience in that open mic. So probably while I was chatting a future star passed before me unknown to me.

It is one of the drawbacks of the open mic format that a lot of the people who attend are musicians who do NOT care for the other musicians’ music and don’t listen…. And then a lot of public is there for only certain friends, and they don’t listen to the others. By the time I got up last night there were only a handful of people left, and they listened. By the time Thomas Brun, the MC, got up to do his final closing bit, EVERYONE listened. But that was as much because Thomas seemed to me at that point – and by then I had ceased to chat much – to be on an even higher level than usual.

I rarely say much about the MCs of open mics here, but it is worth devoting three videos to Thomas. The first is a Nirvana song, the other two are a first and second part of the same song – which, as you will see, takes a certain amount of courage to be sung by a man…. (Someone knocked down my camera or it got turned off, so I did the video in two parts.

I also got Flavie Fontaine’s first song of the evening down on video for this page. She was the second performer of the night, and she has some very interesting, original stuff – this song being a fine example of it.

Mini Post: Rehearsal AND open mic

February 24, 2011
bradspurgeon

Rehearsed for three and a half hours last night with Félix and Virgile in preparation for our concert of my songs and a few cover songs too, the first concert in “group formation” – at the Disquaires in Paris on Sunday. It was a lot of fun, and really cool to work with these two for the first time on my most recent song, Borderline.

I nevertheless got out of the studio at 11:30 AM and that gave me time to go over to The Highlander for the tail end of the open mic. And who should I see playing as soon as I enter but Rony Boy, who is also part of the bill at the Disquaires on Sunday, as he will play with his band “The Romantic Black Shirts.” So suddenly I had a theme for the blog….

Actually, it was cool to see the power of Johnny Cash songs in an open mic situation, as Rony played a Cash song and got the crowd clapping and banging. And the theme runs away with itself now, as Thomas Brun also got the crowd clapping and banging, but through a different method – as you will see in the video below. For my part, I managed to play two songs, starting with “Miles From Nowhere,” by Cat Stevens. And since that went over pretty well I decided on a theme and played for second song, the Cat’s “Father and Son”… which I had also been rehearsing with Félix and Virgile. (Félix of the “Burnin’ Jacks” and Virgile of “Natas Loves You.”

Normally you have to be at the Highlander by 8:30 to get a good spot on the list. But as I arrived after midnight, I had a spot immediately as the last performer – around 1 AM….

The Amazing 15-year-old, David Woroner at The Highlander

December 23, 2010
bradspurgeon

There were a number of acts worth talking about at the Highlander open mic last night, but I’m going to devote this post to David Woroner, 15, from Toronto. This kid just stole the show, stole the night, ran away with everyone’s hearts.

I had noticed in a first glance behind me at one point this very bizarre looking adult who just did not fit in The Highlander – until I realized that this was not a bizarre-looking adult at all. It was a 15-year-old kid from Toronto, on holidays in Paris with his dad and a family friend. The Kid, as he should be known, arrived a little later than most of the performers, and Thomas Brun decided to fit him in on the list, and went and asked a few people if it was okay for The Kid to go before them. I don’t know how many performers were asked, but when it came to me, I said, “Sure, of course, no problem!!”

But I turned and took another look at The Kid, and then I turned and told a friend at my table that I was sure I was going to be crucified. “I think I probably just screwed myself,” I said to her, “this kid is probably going to be some fabulous talent and he’s going to knock everyone out. Then I will go up and play and I’ll be like nothing next to his show.”

On the level of novelty value alone, I was pretty sure I’d be screwed. But whenever I get in a situation like that – or as often as I can – when someone really good or entertaining for whatever reason goes up before me, I always try to remember that all I – or any other musician – has to do as a response is to sing a song that is “true,” “real,” a reflection of your heart and others’.

In any case, Thomas later came up and said, “Change of plan. You’re going up now, the kid will go up after you.”

Phew!!!! I sighed relief. I threw all my heart and soul and body into my three songs: “Crazy Love,” “Borderline” and “Father and Son,” and I got some really enthusiastic applause and screaming of joy even during the songs, particularly the second two.

But I would bask in this feeling of accomplishment and love for no more than about 20 seconds when the audience suddenly took in the image of The Kid behind the mic and with the big guitar. He was so small by comparison to all the other artists that appeared – all adults – and so clearly a kid, that it caught everyone’s attention immediately. Then, man, when David “The Kid” Woroner belted into his chords and singing of his first song, he had won over the audience’s respect and love within the first couple of bars. “What the hell is this!?!?” In short, The Kid could sing. And better than most of the performers that went up last night. Not only that, he had some kind of clear, innate, rock ‘n roll attitude and an impeccable sense of rhythm, no struggle with the guitar and vocals, or if there was, he dealt with it like a pro.

I sighed a sigh of relief that I had not, indeed, been chosen to follow this act! I turned to my friend again and said to her, “You see!”

“Yes, you would have had a hard time,” she said. (For which I wanted to probe her to find out exactly what she meant by agreeing with me like that!!)

I was also disappointed, however, that my batteries ran out on my Zoom Q3 and all I had to record The Kid was my iPhone 4, so the sound would not be as good. Below are two videos, (the “creep” one ends with closer shots of him at the mic as I moved up the room).

After, I spoke to David and asked him if he played in open mics in Toronto. “No.”

He have a myspace? “No.”

His dad corrected one thing, “He has played at Grossman’s Tavern.”

“That dive?!?!” I said, in surprise for a kid doing such a place….

And David added, “I have a group and we have played around here and there.”

In fact, most of how he has learned his chops, it seems, is through this family friend, also named David, who comes around and plays with him in the living room all the time. I have put in a video below of that David playing “Psycho Killer,” in order to show where The Kid’s training comes from.

The Kid’s got a future, maybe….

Oh, and P.S., as soon as The Kid finished his three or four first songs, the Highlander just cleared out! Everyone went out to smoke a cigarette or something else, and the next performer had hardly anyone there to listen. It filled up again soon, and at the end of the night, The Kid went up to sing several more songs.

Toys at the Highlander, Soprano Sax at the Cavern

December 16, 2010
bradspurgeon

Checked out both the Highlander open mic and the Cavern vocal jam session last night. I was particularly impressed at the Highlander by Thomas Brun’s electronic toys he hooks up the guitar and voice too. It is not the first time I have talked about these, but I’m starting to feel more and more like I should invest – it turns every musician into a Dick Van Dyke in the “Mary Poppins” film. Remember? Going around with a drum strapped to him and symbols on his feet and I don’t know what all? The one man band? But in this case, you just have your guitar, and so you do not look so silly. It is a way of getting around the simple guitar/vocal problem of performing alone.

It was quite a different experience at the Cavern. This, as readers of this blog know, is a cool vocal jam in which a very hot band plays standards of rock, blues, soul etc., and anyone from the audience can get up and sing the lyrics – which are located on a book of lyrics in front of you, as in karaoke. I stink at this exercise. But I like going to the Cavern anyway, and seeing just how bad I might potentially sound next to all the professional singers who seem to flock to this place. It can be very discouraging. But the high moment for me last night was to see and hear the guest musician who jumped in with his soprano saxophone during some of the songs. Listen to this guy in video – you have to let it advance a little before he comes in. Then you can think maybe I should have asked him if he could play “My Favorite Things,” like John Coltrane. I didn’t ask.

An 8th of December in Paris, and long ago in Toronto and New York

December 9, 2010
bradspurgeon

I have always kept the same image in my mind of me walking down a snowy Toronto street, at Bathurst and Queen Streets, to be precise, and looking down at the slush and ice on the sidewalk, and up at the lights above the street, and thinking about the death of John Lennon. It was 8 December 1980, and I had had my own birthday the day before and I think I was basking in some strange sense of how I could be feeling good about my birthday – this is no longer the case – while Lennon would never reach another year, and the world – and I – was swamped by the tragedy of his death. How could such an icon die? Worse, be murdered?

In any case, who knows why we sometimes have certain banal images attached in our minds with big events (I mean, why Bathurst and Queen Streets? Right next to the Wheatsheaf Tavern, I think it was….) Of course, it’s the “where were you when John Lennon (or JFK or Martin Luther King etc) died?” question and phenomenon….

So last night, in Paris it was the 30th anniversary of Lennon’s murder, and not only did I have the memory of the snow Toronto evening in my mind as I walked to the Highlander to play in the open mic but I actually also had the same image of the Paris streets and sidewalk and streetlights: Paris was, as Toronto was 30 years before, under a blanket of snow and slush and ice. Where such a thing is banal in Toronto, however, here in Paris it means the city nearly stops functioning.

To Thomas Brun‘s great credit, however, the open mic went on. And it was quite a success, considering that most people had a hard time getting there – no buses, all taxis occupied, streets unwalkable, and metros full. While the Highlander went on, I learned later that the vocal jam at the Cavern was called off because some of the musicians could not get into town.

So it was that the theme at the Highlander was John Lennon. Just before he opened the evening Thomas told me I would go up after him – if I wanted – and began the evening singing three Lennon songs. I was rubbing my hands with delight at the thought that I would play second because I know only one John Lennon song, and that is, “Jealous Guy.” So I thought that I had a very, very good chance to be able to play it. If I went up in the middle of the evening, I was sure someone would play it before me. Oh dear, the third song Thomas did was… “Jealous Guy.”

But I did have a joker, and that was a song that Lennon did, and his rendition of it – rather than the original – is what really got me to thinking I should learn it. So I told the crowd that I would do “Stand By Me” as my Lennon tribute.

This was a night to remember as well, as it turned out, for Paris was SOOOO closed down that by the time I decided to go home the metro had stopped, all of the few remaining taxis were occupied – and every street corner had someone trying to flag down a cab – and all the hotels were booked. I finally managed to find a hotel room for a few hundred euros after a last minute cancellation by someone, and because I got to the counter before the many people sleeping on the floor and couches of the lobby…. Airplanes had been cancelled too, and people could not return to their homes so the hotels were crowded. Only in Paris!!!!!

Further Cool Meetings and Discoveries at The Highlander

October 14, 2010
bradspurgeon

I will keep my wordage to an absolute minimum here since I have written so much about the Highlander. Suffice to say that it was a thoroughly enjoyable open mic in Paris last night, and that like the one on Monday I had a meeting of minds with a foreign group on visit to this country. Also had a reunion with Ollie Fury for the first time since we played together in Singapore a few weeks ago. And got to see live David Broad play his St. James Infirmary, which is superb.

The meeting of minds, as it were, was with the two members of the band NoLand Folk from western Ireland.

I enjoyed their songs, especially the fun one about drinking up. And afterwards I spoke to Edel and found a lot of common ground, not just in music but in an interest in writing. But the high moment of that conversation was surely when we both connected totally on Paul Brady’s version of Arthur McBride, and we sang a few of the versions together. We both knew the video below as a high point of the return to Irish traditional music:

Here are a few of the videos I took from last night at The Highlander, oh, yes, and Thomas Brun’s version of the Dylan song, “Tangled Up in Blue,” which I love singing too, but cannot memorize….

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….

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.