Andrew Clem home
Andrew Clem banner

Blog post


Monthly archives
(all categories)


August 26, 2016 [LINK / comment]

Two more "open mic" gigs

I made another appearance with the Staunton Music Guild at Queen City Brewery on Wednesday night. It was a smallish crowd at first and gradually grew to 25 or so, almost as many people as last week. It was a casual, laid-back atmosphere. I played:

For "Wicked Game," I use the harmonica to play the lead guitar parts. I can sing the low notes on that one pretty well, but it's a challenge for me to reach the high falsetto notes, since I have a limited vocal range. This time I pulled it off well enough. The next two songs went pretty well. On the last one ("Rhythm of Love"), I missed a few notes on the intro riff, to my annoyance. (Jacqueline noticed.) Since there were fewer performers, each of us got to do an extra song, and I hadn't prepared well enough for this one. Practice, practice, practice... I mentioned to the audience that Jacqueline and I had seen the Plain White T's do that song in a post-game concert at Nationals Park two years ago.

One week earlier (August 17) they had the biggest crowd that I had yet seen at Queen City's Open Mic night. Master of Ceremonies Fritz Horisk opened with a hilarious song by blues guitarist Keb Mo, "You Can Love Yourself." Jacqueline was once again present to show support. I played:

I used the harmonica on the first two songs, and my rendition of "Interstate Love Song" with it truly rocks, if I may say so. I try to play at least one relatively recent song (in this case "only" 22 years old) at each appearance to offset my heavy concentration in 1970s-era acoustic/country rock. I took a risk playing "Never Goin' Back," which involves some tricky guitar picking techniques, but it turned out OK. I talked about the Fleetwood Mac concert that that Jacqueline and I had seen last year, paying tribute to Lindsey Buckingham's guitar virtuosity. The audience applauded enthusiastically for all three of my songs, as they did for the several performers after me. Top-notch entertainment, and I was proud to be part of it. It seemed to me that the audience was especially attentive to the music that night, which is not always the case.

Posted (or last updated or commented upon): 27 Aug 2016, 12: 30 AM

(unformatted URL)
      .



This post is over a week old, so comments are closed.


© Andrew G. Clem. All rights reserved. Your use of this material signifies your acceptance of the Terms of use.


Hits on this page (single blog post) since July 2, 2007:

Category archives:
(all years)



This (or that) year's
blog highlights

Blog highlights have been compiled for the years 2010-2012 thus far, and eventually will be compiled for earlier years, back to 2002.


Explanation

The "home made" blog organization system that I created was instituted on November 1, 2004, followed by several functional enhancements in subsequent years. I make no more than one blog post per day on any one category, so some posts may cover multiple news items or issues. Blog posts appear in the following (reverse alphabetical) order, which may differ from the chronological order in which the posts were originally made:

  1. Wild birds (LAST)
  2. War
  3. Science & Technology
  4. Politics
  5. Latin America
  6. Culture & Travel
  7. Canaries ("Home birds")
  8. Baseball (FIRST)