While it is true that there is a new open mic at the Electric Universe on Friday’s, the open mic at the Colatina is something very much worth attending.
It is very much worth mentioning that while the open mic has a number of performers that appear regularly, there are infrequent and often talented tourists who happen by. Last week and again this week N—who was new but also local did a stand-up performance.
The theme, as one might expect, was Halloween this week. I hesitated to put my name on the list because in spite of the fact that I have been playing guitar since I was fourteen, and currently train with local rock star Clayton Robinson, I did not have anything specific in mind to cover.
Enter, my son who had said he would try to come up and watch the World Series which featured a team from my home state. Yes, I am an humble flatlander. He asked it I was going to sing and would I perform a song that we wrote when he was a lad. It is called “Old Mountain Bay” and in my mind it goes back to a time when I was a potential high school student at a boarding school in a tiny village in Argenta British Columbia. They have finger lakes up there too and probably sasquatch.
Instead of singing a Halloween song I did launch into an astronomical explanation for the “celebration” of Halloween.
It went like this: Halloween is a “cross quarter day.” Cross quarter days are halfway between solstice and equinox events.
Somewhere in all of this I began to sing Old Mountain Bay, but due to some degree of brain damage, I realized that the strumming pattern I was using was off. It was exactly like another song I practice a lot called “Take Your Time” by the infamous Lynyrd Skynyrd Southern Rock Band.
There is a loose expectation that you get 3 songs or fifteen minutes and so after the second song, I said something like “well, that is two songs what next?” And even if i thought I heard it from my son, because if it had been anyone else, I would have ignored it and tried something like “Rocket Man” or “Wild Horses” or even “Nikki Don’t Lose that Number” I could swear I heard the boy say” “Free Bird!’ That is what I did—sans the long ending and the wonderful slide guitar part.
