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What I learnt from two open mic nights

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Three Stratocasters in junk shop Byres Road

In the last fortnight I’ve been twice to Muso Monday, a musicians’ open mic night run by Sue Fear at the Kings Heath British Legion.

My mate Steve encouraged me to play guitar with him. Steve plays bass in Rhino and The Ranters, among other things, and loves his 1950s rockabilly. I bumbled along to the Legion not knowing what to expect – just happy to hear some local live music and go with the flow. After two visits, this is what I have learnt:

1. People are friendly

Everyone I met made me feel welcome and there was mutual respect for everyone there. Some people took a turn on the stage; others listened. It didn’t matter. One person, Mike, without ever having met me before, let me play his Strat. I know how protective I am of my guitars and I appreciated the gesture.

2. Practice your songs beforehand

My only experience of open mic nights is from Band on the Wall, Manchester, in the mid 1990s. Those were often extended jazz improvisation jams with a bandleader and house rhythm section backing up an enthusiastic procession of singers, guitarists, saxophonists and trumpeters. Basically, you could get by busking along to songbook standards. If you didn’t know the chord changes or scales – hey, it’s jazz, whatever man!

In the Muso Monday format, you perform two or three songs and best make them count. Standing on stage knowing you can’t actually recall Eddie Cochran’s Somethin’ Else, you don’t know the chord changes and the song isn’t a 12-bar buskable boogie is, ahem, unsettling at best and humiliating at worst. In hindsight, I think it’s unfair to take stage time away from other musicians if you’re not able to give a good performance yourself.

So, a little sheepishly, I will choose some songs and practice them before the next session.

3. Take your best gear

By gear, I mean your amp, instrument, a digital tuner and so on. In the quick rotation format of Muso Monday, you don’t have much time to set up. You need to tune your guitar, warm up amp valves and know your guitar sound will be as you intend – and be ready to play quickly.

On my second visit, living locally, I decided to walk to the venue and carried a dinky Orange Crush 10 watt amp. (I can barely carry my Fender DeVille 212 to the car – it weighs 24 kgs.) The Orange Crush was feeble and I spent the first of two songs (another Cochran standard, Summertime Blues) thrashing the amp without any effect. The audience couldn’t hear me playing and this unsettled me.

While it’s great to be in a position to use a house amp, you will probably not have time to change the amp tone to suit your particular playing style. Also, even in a small venue, your amp has to throw sound through the room and cut through the drums’ volume. This means you need an amp with plenty of headroom wattage and a reasonably sized cabinet.

Next time, I will be there with the beast of the DeVille. I apologise in advance if this shatters any glasses, lands on your toe or falls through the stage.

4. Listen

A good thing about an open mic night is you never know what you’re going to hear. It’s easy to fixate on a particular musical style or spend time worrying about when it’s your turn to get on stage. It’s not all about you. It’s refreshing to sit back, watch and listen.


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