10

the best thing about playing at an open mic is watching the acts that come before you. for example, on sunday night we went down to milwaukee and played at "the coffeehouse," a little venue in the basement of an old church in the heart of downtown milwaukee. the whole family came for this one and emily and kara played with me. also dan was there to document and jackie came with her friend jim (hey, jim.). so it was nice to have a bunch of people there to see this place.

first off, it was very small. and dark. and there wasn't actually real coffee there. i mean, it was anodyne coffee, which is a local brew and very good, but it wasn't a real "coffeehouse," as you'd expect from the name. it was, in fact, the church's basement. a cramped, dark room in a church basement. even so, the atmosphere was great. . . in a dark, suffocating way. the smallness of the room was enhanced by the odd assortment of furniture: overstuffed chairs, mismatched tables, a fireplace, a floor-to-ceiling bookcase, strange hanging lamps from the 60s. the stage was small, but the sound was good. the audience was small but very friendly.

let me say before i talk about the other performers that i think open mics are wonderful places and that they retain their status as "underground" and "outsider" solely on the basis of the performers. i mean, an open mic can be in a pretty mainstream business, but when you have a bunch of amateur musicians and songwriters in a room together, things get pretty strange. and that's as it should be. and it shouldn't be any other way. there is something to be said for artists starting out on open mic stages, honing their craft, etc. but it's more vital that there be a place where people who wouldn't necessarily fit the popular "artist" stereotype can go and perform for an audience.

so on sunday night there was: a 10 year old girl who played the keyboard and sang the saddest songs i've ever heard that are not performed by a band on the "deep elm" label; a psudeo-celtic group who gave a shout-out to "vance" morrison before they played their take on "brown-eyed girl"; an electric guitar solo; a jazz guitarist; a consumate finger-picker; me, emily, and kara playing

magnets and mediums
ECR
hello, hospital

it was a fun night.

next we're playing a short gig at my 10-year high school reunion. yeah, we really are.

steev

hi kids, if you look to the left, you'll see a link for our page on purevolume.com. kind of like the old mp3.com, from before "the man" took it over. anyway, click on it and you'll find pictures, songs to download, show schedule, and some creatively-worded biographical information. and a link back to here.

s.

Interlude -- Don't try

i've always been one to analyze things about my life (and the lives of others, much to their consernation) and i've always taken myself a little too seriously. i'm perfectly willing to admit that i've wasted a lot of time worrying about stuff and trying to figure stuff out, trying to make sense of my thoughts and emotions. you know, a lot of amateur psychological profiling and whatnot. when i was a kid, i always felt like an outsider, like i knew more or thought more critically of things than the kids around me. then, when i grew up, i found that i missed being a kid and that i didn't take many chances.

like, i never played sports. and i never learned to fix a car. i never went to parties or smoked pot or drank beer illicitly. once i skipped school with my friend jackie and we went to the super mall "gurnee mills". i almost got arrested for shoplifting a hackey-sack (which i didn't actually shoplift). really, i just read a lot of books and learned a lot of strange facts about UFO abductions.

so what does this have to do with music? well, i'm not yet half-way through the "20 open mics" project, and i'm already starting to slip. i didn't go to any open mics this weekend, although i had two scheduled. i was too tired. i have a cold and allergies. i have excuses. i'm old and married and my wife misses me. i have two children who want to spit at me and jump on me. most of all, i just get lazy about these projects. so every once in a while i need to feel sorry for myself in public.

tonight, i'm not going to linneman's to play. so that's three open mics i've missed in the space of a week; that's three more i have to make up later. i'm disappointed in myself, but i hold out the hope that i'll use my time away from performing to work on my cd. of course, we just got our tv back (it has been out of the house since thanksgiving) and i haven't seen "lost in translation" yet.

i wrote the song "don't try" when i was 17, but everytime i sing it, i reidentify with it. i guess i don't really feel all that different about myself than i did at that age. some days i'm happy to be alive and "sometimes i feel like dying." and then i feel guilty for feeling guilty. so it's a fun kind of cycle and this whole blog thing makes it easy to make these grand pronouncements about my self-loathing. as if i don't do enough complaining in my music.

on sunday night, i will be in milwaukee at "the coffeehouse." i'm excited about it and hopefully it will lead to a gig there or something. i'll be asking the strings to accompany me, but who knows if they will. sometimes they have other things to do.

steev

9

most of the inkwell collective played last friday at the filling station in west bend. they asked us to play for 2 hours, but we don't have that much material (plus, who wants to hear a band they've never heard play for two hours?). we didn't want an opening band, so i decided to open with a set of acoustic material. i played basically the same songs i played in oshkosh last week:

wisconsin moonlight
she wants her little boy back
berry lake
friend of a friend
don't try
moth and rust
nerve
somebody's daughter
stay hidden

i attempted banjo, which worked out alright. i attempted harmonica, which didn't work out quite so good. it's been a while since i played harmonica and i didn't practice (it's like riding a bike, right? once you learn, you don't forget). so when it came time to bust out my harmonica solo. . .things went a little awry. let's just say it's always a good idea to wear non-flammable clothing to these types of events, and friday was no exception.

there was also din there. you know, that pervasive humming sound that dozens of teenagers make when you are attempting to play. so i was a little perturbed by the noise level and the monitors, which sounded great during sound check, didn't really help much. so i didn't get to "tell stories" between songs or anything. which, if you've heard me tell stories, is not necessarily bad.

but while the kids were getting restless, i had some friends from high school come up and see me. i hadn't seen them in 10 years, so it was interesting to perform in front of them. at the time (10 years ago), i had only written a handful of songs and had not ever performed. but they were very kind and laughed at my self-deprecating remarks and clapped at times.

so when i was done, scott, kara, emily and jessica joined me on the little stage and we plowed through (from memory, now):

small town skin
magnets and mediums
ghost story
medicate! medicate! medicate!
jesus on lithium
the prodigy
she watches birds
hello, hospital

which leaves out our more rock and roll stuff. because jon the drummer wasn't around. in all it was a good show i guess. it sounded muddy at times on stage, and the crowd was a little odd, but it's a nice little place to play. we made $28, enough to cover gas costs. emily left her ID in the truck, and she looks really funny.

steev

8

i played on friday night at the new moon cafe in oshkosh. i used to live in oshkosh and the new moon was the only decent venue in the area for intelligent rock music. so i've always been supportive of the new moon, despite changes in ownership and policies over the years. most recently, the new moon was purchased by aaron baer whom i remember best as singer and mulit-instrumentalist for the jug band "the jackson st. polecats". i was contacted by baer a few weeks ago when he needed to fill a spot for april 9th. over the course of a few e-mails, we decided on having a singer-songwriter night where a bunch of different people would perform short sets. the various acts were supposed to meet at the new moon at 7 pm on friday to decide the direction of the evening.

that's the set-up and i had high expectations. you know, networking with the local scenesters and whatnot--the type of outcome this whole "20 nights" thing was designed to have. unfortunately, through unknown circumstances, there ended up being only myself and a local singer/songwriter named dick. there were only two of us there and no aaron baer. this is the third time i've played at the new moon and not once has anyone from the establishment ever said a single word to me--the barristas don't offer drinks, there is never anyone around to set up the house sound equipment, nobody moves tables off the stage or offers suggestions for any kind of structure; it's kind of weird.

so dick and i were left to ourselves to figure out the sound board, find the cables and mics, attach the house speakers and monitor, etc. then we chatted about who was going to play when. emily was there and she and i opted to play second. then we decided that i should play a solo set first, then dick could play his set, then emily would come up and she and i would play a set. which is what we did. kara came in the middle of dick's set, so we took the stage as a trio to play through a set of singer/songwriter rock music for the dozen or so in the audience. it was a fun evening, but i was kind of pissed at the establishment. i got an e-mail from baer this morning apologizing for not showing up, so that made me feel a little better. i just wanted someone to offer me free coffee!

anyway, i played through a great many of my tunes including "wisconsin moonlight," one of two songs i wrote and perform on banjo. i don't have a setlist since we kind of winged it up there, but we ended with a nice take on "hello, hospital" that i think people liked.

this friday we'll be at "the filling station" in west bend. i'm doing a solo set, then scott, jessica, emily, and kara are joining me for a set of inkwell collective music. jon will be strangely absent. i may or may not be at the open mic on saturday night in appleton, but there is one on sunday night in fond du lac at the art center (another FAMA open mic) that i'll play at for sure.

steev

7

i'm not really sure how to start with this one. in fact, i've vowed to stand fast by the old adage, "if you can't say anything nice, don't say anything at all." but at the same time, one of the reasons i'm doing this open mic crawl is to experience things like last night and to report those experiences to whomever might be reading this.

so "fairgrounds esspresso" is possibly located in some kind of alternate reality. it's in "the heart of downtown west allis" (as their website proclaims) and has this strange suburban vs. urban feel to it. the open mic last night consisted of exactly two types of performers--white people who sang "praise and worship" music (fairgrounds esspresso is evidently a closet-christian-coffeehouse, run by area churches) and colored people who either freestyled or dropped beats and rapped. it was like nothing else i've experienced. like most open mics, there were good and bad performers. i love hip hop when it's done well and a couple of the kids rocked the mic (as they say). conversely, i have a low tolerance for modern praise and worship music (as a genre) and this stuff was pretty bad. one person even sang to taped background music.

anyway, i was the only angry white person there, so i made good on that with:

my use of metaphor
jesus on lithium
hello, hospital

i really was confused as to what kind of songs i should have played and i think "my use of metaphor" was probably a mistake. i had wanted to play "friend of a friend", but i forgot the chord progression! i was very unnerved by the whole experience.

and they had bad coffee.

so next week i'll be in madison on thursday (at the uw union) and on friday night i'll be playing a special acoustic set at the new moon cafe in oshkosh. it's still in the planning stages, but it looks like i'll be sharing the stage with some other local singer/songwriters including aaron baer and kevin keshan.

one thing about this whole "20 open mics" experience so far: it's given me a lot more confidence than usual. the inkwell collective has some gigs lined up in april, may, and june, with hopefully more in the future. check the dates on the left for more information.

steev