First Published: 2023 June 6
Oh wow, it’s been a few months since the last time I blogged about going to open mics. I think it’s been about that long since I went to an open mic, which is sadder. It’s hard for me to balance going to the open mic, which I enjoy, and going to sleep early, which I enjoy having done.1 Still, when a friend said that they missed my presence at open mics2, I decided it was time to dust3 off my old4 guitar.
It was hard for me to pick what I would play. For one, while I have been playing guitar, that has mostly meant doing some picking patterns, some scales, and a few songs that I don’t love singing along to in public.5 My staple open mic songs are all fairly stale, which also didn’t seem like an ideal situation. So, like all great folk musicians,6 I retuned my guitar to DADGAD.7 I’d been working on a Great Big Sea song8 that’s in Celtic tuning9, and I felt like I probably knew a Stan Roger’s song10 well enough to do them.
As it turns out, I knew the Great Big Sea song well enough, and I stumbled through the end of the Stan Rogers’11 piece. Also I learned a fun fact! My throat feeling clogged before open mics is most likely a consequence of having brassicas12 and not being nervous, as I had historically believed!
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wow look at that callback. I’m truly a master of the genre.↩︎
not in those exact words, but that is the interpretation I’m choosing to live with↩︎
metaphorically. I had literally played it at Mass that night and was practicing at least a few times a week before that↩︎
it’s not really. I got it around a year ago, since I wanted an acoustic guitar that A: was in tune and B: had an amp hookup.↩︎
mostly because I still don’t know Fisherman’s Wharf (the song I play the most) well enough to want to share it with others↩︎
I’m not one, and it’s almost certainly overly reductive to say they all did this. I do know that Stan Rogers was encouraged to do this, though, so I assume others were as well↩︎
I.e. bottom, top, and second from the top strings all tuned down one step.↩︎
Boston and St. John↩︎
DADGAD↩︎
Harris and the Mare↩︎
I’m not sure how to add the genitive to Rogers↩︎
which I knew do that↩︎