at the april 2009 open mic just completed, our audience included:
a high school-er who came with her dad and had to leave early because it was “a school night;”
speaking of school, a UM grad student (in engineering) who uses songwriting as her creative outlet and escape from the grinding commitments of the next few years;
speaking of engineering, a retired engineer, probably age 50-something, all of his 3 songs were in 3/4 time or 6/8 time—which of course he knew and the rest of us noticed;
a women who had changed her stage name from when she last came in, two months ago (only I knew about that)—great voice, unusual guitar style;
another 50-something fellow with 5 CDs for sale and a web site and all of that, and a fine guitar player, whose songs were all sort of jokey-country-ish, and later I overheard him in animated conversation with another guy, a terrific piano player who usually works with a band, about the relative merits of the first and third albums of Led Zeppelin, which are a complete mystery to me;
…and more… but what stands out for me is the range of styles and ages and experience levels, and they come to this acoustic open mic for songwriters, in a small space in an Ann-Arbor music store after hours, and this has been happening for a dozen years and it’s wildly various but very interesting to watch this all go by, and contribute my 3-song set, and realize, once in a while, why I keep at it.
(Jim Novak)