Wednesday 11 July 2012

A new open mic night

When Gez the Keys and Adam the Crooner walked away from the Open Mic Night at O’Donoghues in Marlow something deep in me said they were making a mistake. I don’t know whether it was because the management at OD’s had been good to me over the years, because the management at the pub the other two were going to (just a few yards down the street) was clearly not someone with whom one would want to do business, or because I had always wanted to run my own evening – or all three – but it seemed the wrong thing to do for me.

I suggested that we split the evening, that they take on the new session and I would continue at the old venue. I figured the some regular participants would choose between the two and that others would try to get the mic at both… I was wrong.

Gez and Adam took the whole evening, lock stock and barrel and I never saw any of the old regulars again. Fortunately, I had a couple of contacts and John OD and I made a few calls, which led to Andy the Keys, Nick the Guitar and Skinny Hips Tomkins agreeing to come along to OD’s.

Those first few weeks were quite excruciating. Nick and Andy didn’t do solo material and we had never played together before, which wouldn’t have been a problem had dozens of musos and singers turned up to take a slot. They didn’t, of course, and the three of us bumbled through a few standard rock and blues numbers that we had in common and Skinny Hips has a good ability to keep both a turn and get an audience going – but it was seat of the pants stuff.

I’m not quite sure how, but there were always just about enough people there to keep the show and the atmosphere alive.

Seven months later and OD’s Open Mic Night is thriving. Adam and Gez’s night has closed.

Is this why, then, when a landlord from a pub ten miles away in a small village famous for… er… hang on… Oh, yes, having a large hospital two miles down the road, came and asked if I’d be interested in hosting the same at his gaff on a Tuesday night, I said – without hesitation, I might add – ‘yes’?

Thanks to the high of the successful Thursday nights, I had clearly forgotten the gut-wrenching angst that accompanies the build up to an evening that might well be spent on one’s own, shambling through a collection of songs to a smattering (if you’re lucky) of disinterested applause.

Well, if I had forgotten it, I remember it now as all day yesterday I was moping about thinking that I needed to go to the toilet every five minutes. The car was loaded up shortly after lunch and I must have driven everybody I am connected to on Facebook and Twitter to distraction as I pummelled them with reminders about a new Open  Mic Night at The Plough in Stoke Poges.

By five o’clock I was a wreck and the only thing I could do was lie down and listen to the dulcet tones of Eddie Mair on Radio 4 and try not to think about it.

I set out shortly after six and was there at six-forty. I humped the gear in, accompanied by quiet, smirking glances from the regulars that seemed to be saying ‘wanker’. People came and went as I set up, always maintaining a ‘crowd’ of about six people. I caught one guy's eye as he was sitting at the bar. I smiled. He turned away.

‘Bloody hell! Are we expecting The Beatles?’ commented the landlord at the sight of three mic stands. I laughed, hoping to exude a comradely ‘ho, ho, you old wag, you’, but I think it came out more like ‘oh dear, I think I’ve just pooed my pants’.

Once everything was plugged in, I ran through a basic sound check (you know, ‘one, two, one, two’ in the mics, a strum on the guitars – one acoustic, one electric – a tweak on the eq here and there) and went outside for a cigarette. The guy who had ignored me at the bar ignored me again outside.

I went back in and bought a beer – I needed it – and sat in silence. The clock read ten to eight. I was due to start in ten minutes. I have never felt more alone.

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