Last night was the monthly CAC Concerts Open Mic Night. Sub-Evil Boy was able to join me because he didn’t have school today (Good Friday, or Spring Break in more religiously neutral terms), which was a lot of fun.
Eagan MC’ed this time and did a very nice job. I really liked his opening set of songs, including an fine rendition of the classic “Drunkard’s special”. Later (after very nice pieces by Grace and a woman who does English folks songs on the recorder, penny whistle, etc.) John H. did a duet with Huck on “The William” (or two of them more accurately) which was pretty crazy and totally fun.
John and I then sang “An American folk song”, which was two instrumental verses through of Guthrie‘s “This land is your land” (John on guitar and me on harmonica) ending with us singing the one verse about private property that no one ever sings. (Guthrie himself rarely sang it on recorded versions of the song; I have four different recordings of him singing this song, and only one has that verse.) The instrumental part went really well, but the mic levels were pretty whack when we got to the vocal part and I think our vocals came out as distorted mud (and not in a way that was intended or necessarily desirable). Sigh.
Joey then did a couple of songs which Sub-Evil Boy really liked. The (new?) one about the ghost of his great-great-great-grandfather making calls on his cell phone was really cool – one of his best in my opinion. He’s going to be performing live on KUMM tonight somewhere between 9pm and midnight, which should be cool.
Sub-Evil and I were right after Joey. Sub-Evil had been nearly asleep in the back, so I was a little worried, but he totally came alive when we got “on stage”. It’s quite amazing (and wonderful) how powerfully he responds to an opportunity to perform in public.
We did two songs that we’d written together last year: “Phantom, the Three Neuron Dog” and “Hey, hey, fat fly”. “Phantom, the Three Neuron Dog” was for my sister when her wonderful dog Phantom died last December, and as such required a certain amount of introduction (who are Julian and Turq, for example?). We’ve never performed it in public before, and it went over really well (esp. for a song that’s very specific to our family), with several nice laughs from the audience. When we were rehersing last night Sub-Evil Boy broke into a can-can dance during the chorus after the 4th verse, and WeatherGirl and I thought it was really funny so he did it again at the performance. The floor in that space is flat and (despite the huge growth spurt he’s in) Sub-Evil Boy isn’t yet 6 foot 2, and it was fun watching the people in the back bobbing and weaving to see what everyone in the front was giggling about.
Phantom lives!
Sub-Evil and I also did “Hey, hey, fat fly”, which we wrote last summer for a community theater project. I’d sung it at the open mic night two months ago to good response, but had never sung it in public with Sub-Evil before, as I was in NYC at the ConBio conference with my sister when the group performed it in August. Earlier in the evening he’d been pretty lukewarm about performing it with me, but once he got on the stage and the energy kicked in and he was totally good to go. I flubbed the third verse (left out a line, and ended up running out of words before I ran out of music), but we recovered well and headed off to the next chorus. The audience response was really nice, but who wouldn’t love a 5th grader singing goofy songs in public?
We stayed for Huck’s set, which included a great song about wanting to be a rock star. I’m not sure if it’s a cover or an original, but either way it was a total hoot.
Sub-Evil was dying by then (it was 11pm) so we bailed and headed home. Who knows what wonderful stuff we missed after that?
I really enjoyed performing with Sub-Evil and hope that we get to do more of that in the future!
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