Went to another musos camping weekend. This one was at Boonah in Queensland. Friday night was an open mic for all the campers, it was indoors with full PA and good sized audience, close to 50 at a guess.
Did 3 songs, all fingerstyle and the 2nd song was joined on stage with my wife. Fun fun fun.
I’ve posted previously about my struggles with nerves and performance anxiety. There was absolutely no nerves. The whole set just felt very good.
What’s funny to me, I rehearsed the set a couple of times at our campsite earlier in the afternoon and on one of the songs I just didn’t reliably play the Bm barre chord cleanly. Which surprised me as it’s usually a song chord for me. Yet on stage it was clean all six times I played it in the song. When rehearsing I’d been tempted to change the song, now so glad I didn’t and pleased that some times it goes better on stage than in rehearsal. My first ever open mic was Feb 2013 which makes an average of just over 10 open mics a year. Woo Hoo!
The camping weekend was magic. Friday night was an open mic, Saturday was jamming all day, then we were treated to a concert Sat evening by 4 different bands, all friends of the couple that organised the weekend. Delightful music. Then jamming around the campfire till all hours of the night. (I piked early, just before midnight, it’s middle of winter down here and was cold cold cold).
Spent a bit of time on Saturday with a guy who liked my open mic fingerstyle so much he wanted me to teach it to him. That was a buzz as well.
And just got this from a friend who recorded it unbeknownst to me. It’s me singing Have you ever seen the rain on the sat nite…
I love that you have these music/camping events in your area. They look like a ton of fun. Seems like a pretty low-key way to get into open mics with maybe a little less pressure than doing one at a bar or other venue where you don’t know the sorts of folks who might show up.
Yeah, they are indeed less pressure than a pub open mic. Main reason is all the attendees are there for the music. At a pub, they are there for the pokies, the footy or the grog, so you are competing with all that for attention. I remember one pub open mic very well. I was the first performer up and as soon as I started singing, Drunk Amanda joined in about 2 feet from my face and she wasn’t singing anything well.
I was thankful at that open mic that I’d been doing them for some time and was pretty much able to ignore her. Can only imagine how that might throw someone who was new to such performances.
Haha! the first open mic my wife did at a pub surprised her a bit. the place was pretty quiet overall that night, but a friend of ours brought his new girlfriend and she just started cussing up a storm (loudly) because she was surprised how good my wife was.
