Boy Wonder: Professional Musician 4

Day 3 - March 12, 2009

Today was a slow day as far as Bang Camaro happenings. I ventured further into Cambridge to try and find some breakfast. I ended up at the Cambridge Coffee Shop where I met my first black person in Boston today, a nice woman from DC who explained to me that Cambridge & Somerville (The Section I’m staying in) was generally light on color. I had three pancakes and some bacon and walked back to the apartment.

When I got back to the apartment I decided to pick up my guitar for the first time. Picking up the martin gives a sense of the familiar as I make chords and strum. I had some new ideas for tunes that I played enough to commit to memory, no lyrics yet just ideas. It got to the point where I was jonesing to perform somewhere. It had been 3 days since I’d performed Boy Wonder songs for anyone. So I hit up the wonderful world wide web in search of a Boston Open Mic on a Thursday Night.

I found something called sqwak coffee house that started at 9PM, the key was finding out when Bang Camaro rehearsal was. It would be our last before the tour starts and it was scheduled to start at 11PM, I figured I could go, play, and be back in time to rehearse with the band. Shawn/Sean made arrangements to visit some friends in Quincy so he wouldn’t be making the rehearsal, he and I rehearsed some tunes in the living room of the apartment.

The band agreed to drop me off at Sqwak but as I looked the address I realized that it was an old church, before I could voice my second thoughts about this enterprise the van drove off. A quick phone call and I discovered that the open mic actually was in the church. I had to wait 30 minutes to get in so I took the time to walk around Harvard’s campus. People watching is one of my favorite pass times, these people seemed to have more on their mind than I did when I was in college.

I walked back and after some waiting I went in, something comforting and familiar about signing up for an open mic.

The crowd was older, the environment was warm, they told me that these people had been coming to this open mic since 1990, which was pretty impressive. The room was in the back of the church sanctuary they had a divider up so that you couldn’t see the pulpit and such. They opened up with the host reading some poetry by Pablo Neruda with a pan flute playing behind them. They asked me to come up first. So I slam into (Oh) I Wish I Loved You feeling more and more like myself with every note. I was a bit nervous until the small crowd applauded me. It’s been a while since I performed in front of a crowd that small and I delighted in sharing some witty banter with them about music and my songs. I banged through How Can This Be Love and I noticed how my short time with Bang Camaro has really improved my singing. Having to sing from chest and diaphragm with them is forcing me to do it naturally. I ended with Wasted, something I thought would be appropriate in the environment I was in. I sat and watched a high school kids play Eric Clapton’s hello friend before Bryn called me and told me he was outside.

As I was walking out I heard the host talk about how it was the first time they’d ever had Graham Crackers at the open mic. Then I learned that Graham Crackers were originally invented to suppress a woman’s libido. I’ll have to research that later.

I really got a chance to talk to Bryn a lot about the industry and learn about the way Bang Camaro does business. I shared my limited experience with the big bad music industry and it allowed me to get some prospective on what I may be able to do where my own career is concerned. I’ve learned a great deal in just the few short days that I’ve spent in Boston with these guys.

His girlfriend came by the apartment and the three of us watched a documentary on Genesis, shot the shit about music, life, the differences between Boston and Philadelphia etc. I feel like I talk about Philly a lot when I talk to the members of the band sometimes, I guess I’m one of a select few that gets excited whenever the city is mentioned.

Bryn was home to sleep in his bed so I have the couch tonight. After an awful Avengers re-run on Disney XD I hit the sack.

Big day tomorrow.