Boy Wonder: Professional Musician 215

Day 214 - October 12th 2009

We have a few things working against us in October.

1) The weather starts to change. It’s getting colder and people decide to stay inside until they get used to it. As if seasons don’t change every year

2) The Phillies are in the playoffs. They were so bad for so long it didn’t matter now people are watching baseball during the week into October.

3) The full weight of the college semester has been slammed down upon you by about Mid October. I remember not wanting to do anything but work done around this time as midterms were coming up fast.

With these things in mind I’m generally anxious about the line at the open mic and when I got there at around 5:30 I was a little anxious about the overall draw for tonight. We have bad nights, something they didn’t seem to have in previous years. But as the hour drew nigh the line filled up and we were confronted with something that has literally never happened before. From nine pm to close we would have all track performances.

Not only do we have the singer/songwriters and the bands, we get quite a few hip hop and R&B acts that perform to pre-recorded tracks. In Philadelphia these performers, who often get less of an opportunity to perform actual shows, are increasing exponentially often taking up one third of the slots at any given open mic that’s open to them performing. It’s where the sea is moving. Tonight they would make up more than half.

Many have feelings about people that perform to pre-recorded tracks, some think they don’t belong, I disagree. I have my personal preferences about how I like my music to be presented but that doesn’t mean that these guys don’t have the right to perform, you can perform to pre recorded tracks and still be amazing. I’ve been there long enough to see it.

I tried some new tunes, they still need work, loads of it. But I like molding the songs by performing them at their various stages forging them from the fires of audience response. The performer in me is screaming but I may develop these new batch of songs this way. I’ve definitely never done it before.

Joe Jordan, a guy I used to busk with in Independence Mall many, many moons ago was our standout for the night. Extremely talented guy, we reconnected by him showing up at Philly Rising last week. It’s been good to see him. He hosts an open mic at Doc Watson’s on Wed Nights, I have Lickety so it’s gonna be hard to get over there but I’ll probably try at some point.

All in all it was a pretty good night. Not particularly balanced but I’m going out tomorrow to reach out to the singer/songwriter community