The Grape Street Pub open mic was slower than usual because of the Eagles game, but it wasn’t too bad. John Francis, Jason Wheatley, and Adrien Reju all sounded great. It was Jason’s first time playing the Grape and they seemed to like him there. Hopefully he’ll come back on a busier night. Adrien played my favorite new song of hers, “Kaleidoscope” and you missed a great performance if you didn’t see her last Friday at 3 Beans in Haddonfield. She was awesome. Tom Gillam, the host of the GSP open mic, is a great guy but I would love it if he could get there by 9:30. I can’t give Tom too much grief because he seems to genuinely like when I show up on Monday nights. Luckily, a few people on the list never showed so I got on a little earlier than planned.
I satisfactorly played “The Genius of it All” and “Why Now Satan?” and once again asked myself the question, “When am I going to write a new song?” I could probably churn out a few pretty quickly if I wanted to, but I doubt they would be any good. I could go for the 10% strategy where you write 10 songs and at least one will be good enough to play without puking, but that takes a ton of time. Question to self: Why do I think this should be easier?
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2 responses to “Open Mic Recap @ the Grape Street Pub”
Ben – adding new originals has always been a tough nut for me, too. Once you have a few that you are comfortable with, it’s tempting to rely on those ones only. I think the 10% strategy, tough as it is, can really work. Sometimes you’re lucky if you get 10%. I wrote at least 10 songs in the last 5 years which got lost along the way, and I only recently resurrected one of those for a place in the repertoire (with the standbys I wrote in a flurry, mid-’90s) *Anyway, hang in there ,,,John S. (http://www.johnshaughnessy.com * w/new content!)
Right now I only have two songs I wrote in the last year that I still play. That’s not too productive, so I hopefully I can change that.