It was a First Friday on the SouthSide, and Godfrey’s had one of its series of Open Mike spotlights. Tonight, it was Sam Steffen, Joe Janci and myself. We decided to do it ‘in the round’ so we passed the baton, doing two songs each, around and around. Joe is a fine country pop songwriter with good chops lyrically, and he was a fine addition to the evening. Sam Steffen is the new kid on the block; a superb songwriter with epic songs and a wry sense of humor. He also had family in town, so a majority of the folks showed up for his first spotlight on the Godfrey’s stage. He did not disappoint. Great stuff and great response.

 

I got to do a nice mixed bag of tunes including It’ll be Me, Vegetable Song, Lessons from Pete, July, Me and Martin Growing Old, and others. I was surprised when several folks came up and said I was on tonight. Always a surprised when I get those compliments for some reason. Just trying to play strong and do a variety of styles. The whole evening got high marks from quite a few of the GD volunteers as well, partly because of the format, partly because of the three folks on stage and partly because it was a good, full house.

 

I wrapped up the evening with God Bless America and we all headed out to see the fireworks as dusk turned to dark.

 

When we first discussed doing the evening on the 4th of July, no one knew if people would come out, and we basically said, “Let’s just play.” It turned out much better than we had expected.