{"id":1182,"date":"2016-06-05T21:16:39","date_gmt":"2016-06-05T21:16:39","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/websterart.com\/wordpress\/?p=1182"},"modified":"2016-06-05T21:16:39","modified_gmt":"2016-06-05T21:16:39","slug":"open-mic","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/websterart.com\/wordpress\/2016\/06\/open-mic\/","title":{"rendered":"Open Mic"},"content":{"rendered":"

Craig and I went to an open mic in Port Orchard last week. I was very nervous beforehand.<\/p>\n

A little history:
\n<\/strong>I had not played at an open mic since I was in my twenties. At that one (1978), I got stage fright so bad I blanked out halfway through my first song. I was staring at my sheet music but I couldn’t see it. It took me 30 seconds to recover. During that time I saw and heard the audience get restless and begin talking to each other, clearly nervous about my stage fright. Once I calmed down, I played fine, and even got some nice applause for my last number.<\/p>\n

Back to the present:<\/strong>
\nWhile sitting\u00a0there with Craig, watching the people playing before me. I was remembering the chaos of my last open mic experience. As my turn got closer and closer I got more and more nervous. In the back of my mind \u00a0I was also remembering that I can’t sing on key. I’ve recorded myself singing, and my voice is terrible. For the son of a choir director, I sing badly.<\/p>\n

Finally my turn came and I walked up to the stage\u00a0with my guitar, harmonica and sheet music. The owner was very friendly<\/a>\u00a0and came up to help me set up the mic’s and do a sound check. When we first walked in he was singing the blues while simultaneously playing the guitar and harmonica. I have never heard anyone do that. He was awesome!\u00a0I told him beforehand that I was a better harp player than anything else and he said he would make some calls to bring in some good blues players.<\/p>\n

I had planned to introduce myself first, but my sound check sort of turned into my first song. I was too nervous to talk and just\u00a0wanted to get it over with. As usual, my voice felt very strong, and I knew my harp and guitar were passible, if not decent. I got through my 3 songs without any huge errors. But afterward, I asked Craig how I did.<\/p>\n

“Well, your harp and guitar sounded awesome, but your voice was just ok. It’s too bad you can’t find a way to perform without singing.” …That’s my buddy Craig. He doesn’t pull any punches. And he was right of course. If I really want to sing, I need to take voice lessons. Definitely didn’t inherit perfect pitch from dad. I can hear pitch\u00a0great on my harp and guitar, and it feels right when I sing, but it’s not.<\/p>\n

Afterward, as promised, two other great blues musicians showed up, and they invited me to jam with them, which\u00a0was awesome. I can rock the harp with no problem at all. I’m on key, I can riff between verses, and I was even able to team up with a sax player, who was possibly the best musician in the house. Plus those guys could sing the blues! Man, that was so much fun.<\/p>\n

But afterwards I lost my drive to practice. I’m already not painting, not since Christmas. Stopping the guitar too was shutting off all my creativity. Finally today, 10 days after the open mic I played guitar at the kitchen table.<\/p>\n

In the words of Maya Angelou:\u00a0\u201cA bird doesn\u2019t sing because it has an answer, it sings because it has a song.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Craig and I went to an open mic in Port Orchard last week. I was very nervous beforehand. A little history: I had not played at an open mic since I was in my twenties. At that one (1978), I got stage fright so bad I blanked out halfway through my first song. I was […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[60,59,58,56,57],"class_list":["post-1182","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-blog","tag-blues-harp","tag-harmonica","tag-live-performance","tag-open-mic","tag-stage-fright"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/websterart.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1182","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/websterart.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/websterart.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/websterart.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/websterart.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1182"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/websterart.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1182\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1183,"href":"https:\/\/websterart.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1182\/revisions\/1183"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/websterart.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1182"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/websterart.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1182"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/websterart.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1182"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}