1300 Weeks
On Friday, February 25, 2022, Songwriters Open Mic passes 1300 weeks of broadcasts on the Community Television Network. Each “week” on CTN begins with a Friday-evening broadcast, followed by at least three additional re-broadcasts over the week. Broadcasts are live-streamed over the internet, and the schedule is at https://www.a2gov.org/departments/communications/ctn/whats-on/Pages/default.aspx#A2TV. 25 years ago, the broadcasts were scheduled only once a week and available only to cable tv subscribers in Ann Arbor. To extend our reach, the programs were also broadcast on the public-access station in Grand Rapids, where they are still broadcast weekly, and on another network that once served 9 counties in northern lower Michigan.
200 of the Songwriters Open Mic 30-minute shows from recent years are archived on a YouTube channel, at https://www.youtube.com/channel/UC9NEc1wuphx3tiaBQwvcoXA/videos
The live open mic where these episodes are videotaped started in February of 1996 at Oz’s Music Store in Ann Arbor. Until COVID and social-distancing concerns hit, the store’s cozy performance space served as home, except for a short stint at a local book store and occasional on-the-road video-tapings at songwriter events around Michigan — Traverse City, Cheboygan, Mackinac Island, Battle Creek, Harbor Springs, and other locations. Oz’s Music Store continues to serve musicians and students on Packard Road.
Our open-mic performances and the videotaping switched to Zoom by April of 2020. The difficulties of doing live music over Zoom were overcome fairly quickly by a handful of motivated and tech-savvy performers. The videotaping continues, and un-edited tapes are immediately shared with the performers via DropBox. In this Zoom era, the frequency of our open mic has shifted to weekly events, on Tuesday evenings, and now the performers are not only locals, a few of whom go back to early days of Songwriters Open Mic, but also songwriters from a couple dozen states, 5 countries, and 3 continents.
As many have noted over the past 22 months, what is unfortunately lost due to “physical distancing” can be countered by efforts toward virtual connectedness. At Week 1300, it feels good to appreciate the vital community that Songwriters Open Mic is and has been for so long, and to acknowledge the community within Community Television Network, broadcasting the programs for more than 25 years.
Jim Novak, host and producer, Songwriters Open Mic
jimnovakmusic@gmail.com
The episode broadcast during Week 1300 is on the YouTube channel at https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rzDDBqcO-7k&t=1594s Recorded over Zoom, it includes 3 songs by John Peiffer from Maryland, and one each by Carolyn Cott from Pennsylvania, and Jim Eddy from Michigan. Jim Novak closes with a song called “Open Mic Music.”
