Open Mike, Tim Noah's Thumbnail Theater, Snohomish, WA, 9-10-2010

Played at the open mike again last night – though due to a snafu in getting there, I wound up playing last (there were still enough people in the audience to be worth it)… I also tentatively scheduled a concert (not an open mike) for Thursday evening, October 14th. More on that as the time approaches.

Some highlights of this open mike:

Julio’s screaming of 20-something angst over technically impressive guitar work – a fusion of speed-metal and flamenco. This is what Al Di Meloa might do if he played in a punk rock band. One of the songs had the repeated refrain “Let it go,” which in itself wouldn’t be so interesting if he hadn’t somehow fused his voice and the guitar into a single percussive instrument right at the key point.

Jan’s rendition of “Summertime” in a very beautiful classic jazz-vocal style.

Marco’s jazz piano – he managed to mix Thelonious Monk and Rachmaninov into one style for an instrumental rendition of “Somewhere over the Rainbow” with lots of neo-Romantic runs and intentional “clunkers” hit at exactly the right time. His second piece was “in the style of a piano roll” and it did, in fact, sound like a player piano.

Greg’s humorous, high-energy Gospel song with a lot of fast swing guitar – none of those adjectives there need contradict each other.



As I’ve said before, this is one of the best open mikes north of Seattle. That’s me there with the mike in my face, playing the rondolin (see my July 19th and August 28th postings) and Vance on the djembe, though this picture was taken last month.