I love having this slot at Godfrey’s. Its an open mike that falls on the occasional 5th Sunday, so I figured to call it a Vintage Open Mike. Initially, it was to encourage the old farts to come out, and some actually do. But some of the younger folks get to put their two cents in on what it means.  Some nice derivations.

 

Basically, I get to run the show, do sound, emcee and fool around. I do get to play with the audience along the way and it makes for an entertaining evening. Dawg Jesse Grim did two wonderful songs, Bill Hall did two powerful tunes. I opened with Giants and Jelly in the Dish.

 

Bill was trying to wrap up a GD OM CD project so he wanted some stuff from me and for himself, but he let the whole night tape, so that’s great.

 

I finished the night by getting everyone to get out their guitars and play “Pay Bo Diddley” with me. It was a nice way to finish out the night. It wasn’t as neat as the time I did it for the first time, though. Amazingly we all ended together, but decided to do add a Big Ending, which was delightfully overplayed. Community.

 

This is something I did back in CT at Roaring Brook when I was the feature for their open mike. It quite literally dawned on me that I was in a room of players, and it was somewhat presumptuous of me to be playing for them instead of with them. So I said, “Everybody go get your instrument,” and they did. 24 guitars, some drums and whatever.

 

I said, “Its got one chord.” So off we went on the Bo Diddley beat in D. A great moment happened when I thought, “Let’s all play a lead,” and so we did. It was an incredible moment – everyone invested in the song and everyone adding their own creativity. The energy was great, and the ending was even better, each adding their own signature to this sonic collage. One of the great moments in my CT performing career.