Open Mic Recape @ the Tree House

Tonight was exhausting. Someone must have messed with the sound system since last Wednesday, because it was giving us problems all night. At first it was so bad we had to mix people using only the gain knob! Eventually with the help of Roz and Adrien lending us her tuning pedal, we were able to get things sounding decent again. A huge thanks goes out to Roz, because without him I would have been lost with no clue how to fix it.

The upside is that the place was packed! I even had a hard time moving around to talk to people. I started at 8:00PM like I planned and we didn’t have a single repeat performer all night. Jason Wheatley closed out the night with an awesome set around 11:15PM.

The performers were:

1. Ben Garvey – (played “I Hope I Die on the Moon,” “The Genius of it All,” and “Why Now Satan?”)

2. Keith Lewis – Sorry Keith, your set was pretty much a 2nd sound check. Everyone should go look at his new website, despite the fact he admits on there to being a fan of Bob and Tom.

3. Barry Dwier – He pulled out a great cover of “House of the Rising Sun.” Catch him every Sunday at the Daily Grind in Mt Holly.

4. hipp music – Are acoustic hip hop covers out of style? This guy doesn’t think so and belted out the “Thong Song” to a warming audience. I liked his 2nd original the best, although I wish I could have listened to it more closely. His website is great and completely my style. He also sent me a few emails today with some interesting quotes:

I cannot reconcile a conundrum of this magnitude 13 minutes after waking up and halfway into a cold container of baked ziti.

Wow. I am an ass of an heretofore unheard of caliber. That sentence scores two triple words scores. Are there any content guidelines for this place?
I’ve had bad experiences in the past with overstepping unknown or undisclosed boundaries.

5. Chelsey Allen – Followed hipp music’s “Thong Song” with some fun kid jokes. I like it any time a kid gets the guts to go on stage. She didn’t look nervous at all.

6. Adrien Reju – She turned the whole night around with three awesome songs. Anyone who reads this site often already knows I think she’s the best, but now she’s even higher in my book.

7. Matt Winn – Not as stellar a performance as last week, but a good set. His style can sound a lot different from night to night depending on how the sound is set up. He was supposed to bring up some Delawarians with him, but they all bailed. I won’t hold it against the state. He has a gig coming up this Saturday at Full Circle Records. I forgot to snag a flier so hopefully he’ll email me the details.

8. Willie Tapps – The Collingswood superstar never puts out a bad performance. I didn’t hear any feedback at all while Willie played and that’s a first since I started hosting.

9. James Cuartero – James is a friend of a friend and I finally got him to come out to the open mic. I’ve met him once before and tonight he asked me if I used to have a beard. I replied, “In another lifetime maybe,” in reference to my extremely sparse facial hair. Later on in the conversation we figured out that we met before at a Halloween party where I had drawn a fake, pencil thin mustache on myself. I liked James’s songs alot and one of these days I’ll make it out to see his band, Apple of Discord. Their website is awesome because it lists street-fighterish “special moves” for each member of the band.

10. Nelson Ciron – He was a year behind me at Paul VI High School and I knew him a little through the music events we had back then. I liked his stuff then and I like it now. He’s the drummer from Apple of Discord.

11. Girl Upstairs – I haven’t seen these guys in a while and it’s great to see they’ve improved. They seem to play very well together. It’s tough to find two people who compliment each other.

12. Harry Wolf – Did a Jay Leno style bit where he asked people questions like “What does FDIC stand for?” or “What year did the Korean War begin?” He recorded the whole thing for his radio show on 1360AM, which airs Tuesday nights at 11:00PM.

13. Roz King – MVP for tonight’s sound system. His songs sounded great, too, especially “Heroin.”

14. Ray – At this point of the night my brain was fried and I didn’t pay too much attention. I’ll have to check out his stuff again next time.

15. Jason Wheatley – A former Living Room open mic host who closed tonight’s show with some awesome stuff. Jason’s been playing his ass off lately and it shows.

A huge apology goes out to Maria who had to leave before I could get her on. You’ll definitely get to play next time.