Nashville Day 2 : A (country) music Mecca!
My dearest friends!
Woke up Sunday and Steve had gone off to church before we woke up and left us a carafe of coffee, I looked for a mug but could only find mason jars and so I started my day with peanut butter and apples and coffee in a mason jar on the run to catch the bus!
After we did a little sight seeing, Alexa and I resolved to go busking (performing on the street for tips) as it was nice out and we had a clear day of exploration! We separated and picked spots to perform...without any music to accompany me I realized I just seem like madman rambling words that rhyme (which isn't inaccurate!) people treated me sort of like guiltily apathetic people do around the homeless in New York City, I assume here with live music pouring out of every over Honky Tonk door and abundant street performers, you get disillusioned. Not to mention I was doing a very niche thing in a very genre specific city (which we learned later that day). One man all decked out like a cowboy stopped and listened to me as I was performing Trash Can Epiphanies, and I performed the whole second verse directly to him eye to eye and he was really into it and dug 75 cents out of his pocket and dropped it into my empty mason-jar-mug! That was about the extent of my success and Alexa didn't have much different luck!
We checked out some honky to is and an incredible candy store reminiscent of Mr. Wonka's factory that I fell in love with but refused on principle to buy candy when I only made 75 cents busking! After marveling at sweets we then went to the massive Nashville Public Library! Spent time reading there and I read a great short story by Ray Bradbury from his collection "One More For The Road" and then headed out to make the list six at The Commodore open mic with Steve.
The open mic was our first experience of performing and open mics in Nashville and it was admittedly disappointing. The open mic was in a bar and cafe area adjacent to a Hotel lobby and the first three and a half hours was done in four "rounds" of chosen performers, before the open mic began. The rounds function as three or four performers that sit on stage and play single songs one after another. Each performer was exclusively a country singer and, gender non withstanding, each was indistinguishable from the next and 95% of them were abysmally generic and unoriginal, which is not to say these weren't good people. Everyone just had a sense of doing writing playing and singing everything they were because that was what they were supposed to do, not because some inner creative need or outer catalyst muse prompted it out of their souls to personally make something unique and their own.
Finally Alexa (or Alesia Odeksa as the host insisted on announcing her) Steve, another man Steve and I go up as the first open mic acts. After several hours of spectating respectfully we were not given our own stage moment, we were allowed to play one song and tracks were not allowed to be played (so if you didn't have an instrument or a player with you you're screwed, aka me). Alexa performed "Nomads" acoustically really well, I performed my verse from "Will She Ever Change?" a Capella and made mention of the fact that many people had performed songs tonight about an uncompromising sense of identity and yet Alexa was the first person to do anything remotely different in nearly four hours. Steve played a distorted bass guitar like a six string and played a hilarious song parodying bands who talk about teenage love even as they age which turned into a song about time travel and looking for a partner in that time travel journey! By odd coincidence the fourth performer we shared the stage with hailed from Pennsylvania and if I could play tracks I would have played Pennsylvanian Patriarch but since I couldn't I played a verse from a song I remixed of my Pennsylvanian friend Phil Minissale's song so that was a odd and neat to me! We performed to perhaps a tenth of the audience that were there for he rounds and it was now 11pm so we headed home and fell asleep, feeling a little chagrined, so we freestyle jammed and to cheer ourselves up in five minutes we had a parody country song!
Don't dare to be different, just resolve to be yourself,
-AllOne
Woke up Sunday and Steve had gone off to church before we woke up and left us a carafe of coffee, I looked for a mug but could only find mason jars and so I started my day with peanut butter and apples and coffee in a mason jar on the run to catch the bus!
After we did a little sight seeing, Alexa and I resolved to go busking (performing on the street for tips) as it was nice out and we had a clear day of exploration! We separated and picked spots to perform...without any music to accompany me I realized I just seem like madman rambling words that rhyme (which isn't inaccurate!) people treated me sort of like guiltily apathetic people do around the homeless in New York City, I assume here with live music pouring out of every over Honky Tonk door and abundant street performers, you get disillusioned. Not to mention I was doing a very niche thing in a very genre specific city (which we learned later that day). One man all decked out like a cowboy stopped and listened to me as I was performing Trash Can Epiphanies, and I performed the whole second verse directly to him eye to eye and he was really into it and dug 75 cents out of his pocket and dropped it into my empty mason-jar-mug! That was about the extent of my success and Alexa didn't have much different luck!
We checked out some honky to is and an incredible candy store reminiscent of Mr. Wonka's factory that I fell in love with but refused on principle to buy candy when I only made 75 cents busking! After marveling at sweets we then went to the massive Nashville Public Library! Spent time reading there and I read a great short story by Ray Bradbury from his collection "One More For The Road" and then headed out to make the list six at The Commodore open mic with Steve.
The open mic was our first experience of performing and open mics in Nashville and it was admittedly disappointing. The open mic was in a bar and cafe area adjacent to a Hotel lobby and the first three and a half hours was done in four "rounds" of chosen performers, before the open mic began. The rounds function as three or four performers that sit on stage and play single songs one after another. Each performer was exclusively a country singer and, gender non withstanding, each was indistinguishable from the next and 95% of them were abysmally generic and unoriginal, which is not to say these weren't good people. Everyone just had a sense of doing writing playing and singing everything they were because that was what they were supposed to do, not because some inner creative need or outer catalyst muse prompted it out of their souls to personally make something unique and their own.
Finally Alexa (or Alesia Odeksa as the host insisted on announcing her) Steve, another man Steve and I go up as the first open mic acts. After several hours of spectating respectfully we were not given our own stage moment, we were allowed to play one song and tracks were not allowed to be played (so if you didn't have an instrument or a player with you you're screwed, aka me). Alexa performed "Nomads" acoustically really well, I performed my verse from "Will She Ever Change?" a Capella and made mention of the fact that many people had performed songs tonight about an uncompromising sense of identity and yet Alexa was the first person to do anything remotely different in nearly four hours. Steve played a distorted bass guitar like a six string and played a hilarious song parodying bands who talk about teenage love even as they age which turned into a song about time travel and looking for a partner in that time travel journey! By odd coincidence the fourth performer we shared the stage with hailed from Pennsylvania and if I could play tracks I would have played Pennsylvanian Patriarch but since I couldn't I played a verse from a song I remixed of my Pennsylvanian friend Phil Minissale's song so that was a odd and neat to me! We performed to perhaps a tenth of the audience that were there for he rounds and it was now 11pm so we headed home and fell asleep, feeling a little chagrined, so we freestyle jammed and to cheer ourselves up in five minutes we had a parody country song!
Don't dare to be different, just resolve to be yourself,
-AllOne
Comments
Post a Comment