I’ve only participated in the whole open mic scene for a couple of years, but I’ve attended regularly for at least fifteen. Most of them consisted of pearl-snap shirts and cowboy hats. Lots of blues and sad stories about the one who got away. Big, bearded, husky f*ckers with tales to tell.
Let’s set the mood:
Then, technology jumped as we, collectively, raped another alien for his cell phone information. Same as authoring; everyone is now a recording artist. Unfortunately, since most of them failed to log the mileage that goes along with the little successes, the talent doesn’t fit the outfit. That’s why I show up in cargo shorts and a Jurassic Park t-shirt; I still feel as though I’m beginning my journey. Time is not a luxury anymore, so forgive me if I’m share-happy from time to time. Also, don’t come here. We do good things here. You know you you are, but I digress.
Those old school open mic guys from back east were all bikers and farmers whose souls were metaphorically circling the drain; like myself. They’d lived, and now they were telling you all about it. There was emotion enough to share.
That sh*t’s rare in the city.
When I first sought a sort of musical home, this place boasted the longest running open mic in Dallas. I was sold and, ironically, so was the venue. I walked in the door along with the new owner. It may have switched hands again already.
Their website instructed the unknowing into believing covers weren’t allowed, acoustic only with no effects, and that many of the vanity-talent television shows boasted participants who got their start on their stage.
Fast-forward a couple of years, and it’s covers, mp3 back tracks, and skin tight dresses for the Instagram feed. It’s boyfriends bargaining for their girl to get extra songs, and special time slots if you’re in the clique.
I show up 45 minutes early to get a good spot. By the time the hand jobs cease, I’ve been there an hour, I’m rock hard (artistically), needing to piss, and wanting to leave.
I don’t know; I guess it all felt more real when the musicians barely got a chance to knock the barn manure off their boots before their name was called. If you looked at your phone while that cowboy cried, you were a dick. The end.
Or was I just drunk, and five years of sobriety has lifted the veil?
Was it like this all along, or was I merely infatuated with a handful for normal Joe’s who spoke a language I’d craved since first seeing Gene Simmons vomit blood on stage during a late-night HBO concert? I was on my knees in front of one of those massive console televisions (the death bringers), and my grandmother angrily drug me away for the sake of my five year old soul. I remember being drug from my uncle’s sin-dungeon on several occasions. Grandma obviously wasn’t quick enough. Rock got me, but I repressed the urges for the most part for the next forty-five years. It took a back seat to amateur sex god and mediocre writer.
I’m still all of those things, but I’ve added wannabe musician. It’s okay to live in meh, because the chicks were never as picky as the John Hughes movies claimed they’d be. Just owning a guitar in early nineties Greenville, Texas could get you blown; you just had to break up with them before they asked you to play it.
Preach truths, toke jokes, and shoplift Amazon. I live in the heart of a North Texas Metropolis, and there’s a possum ten feet behind me giving it everything he or she has with its back claws to ascend a plastic dumpster. Part of me thinks we should sell the condo, and buy some land in the East Texas pines; or near Santa Fe…
I’m not done with Dallas, though. Not by a long shot. As a matter of fact, I don’t even believe I’ve begun to scratch the surface of what I could do in Dallas, whether that be as a musician, a story teller, a journalist, or all goddamn three. I need to find some friendly, strumming hippies, and I need to find them yesterday.
An artist is only as good as the energy he/she keeps. I’m flickering, man. I could use a recharge. The hard part is finding a cool place to plug in without an adapter. Adaption was never really my thing. At least, not at first.
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