Open Mic Results...

The open mic went pretty well for me in the end. The evening got off to a rough start when the road I was taking to get to Greenwich was closed off, and I got detoured onto the back streets of SE London. Luckily, I had Gerry (a long time SE Londoner who was playing conga with me) to navigate. He said he knew exactly where we were the whole time, but I was secretly starting to panic a bit as we spent an extra 15 minutes winding around some very dark streets. We arrived at the pub unscathed and only a little bit late.

Unfortunately, there were only about 4 other people there (all other performers). They put off the starting time for the evening, but there was still only a small handful of people there when things kicked off.

My neighbor arrived to cheer me on. This was especially encouraging because he has to listen to me practice though the floor (he lives upstairs), so his presence there indicated that my practicing is not driving him too insane.

A couple of guys from work came to check it out as well. Just as they were arriving, the worst performer of the night was on stage. The poor guy was alone hammering on an out of tune, distorted, electric guitar while howling out of tune unintelligible words. My friends from work admitted that they were nervous that it was me that they heard on stage as they were arriving at the pub. They were quite relieved to find me sitting at the back of the room waiting my turn.
Things seemed to improve from there. A few more people arrived, I made it through my songs without major incident, and there were a couple of really good performers towards the end of the night. It was a good step forward for me. Everyone was very encouraging about the performance (but you never really know how good it is).

Over the Christmas break, I will really start digging into some recording and hopefully set up some new and exciting places to play in the new year. New years resolution #1: Record a full length album. New Years Resolution #2: Perform more often. Hopefully I didn't just jinx myself...

JE