Archive for March, 2010

band developments

As of tonight, I have a new band! We’re all friends, and we’ve been playing at open mics together for years, but tonight we had our first official practice. Here’s the lineup:

Chris Hamilton of Radiation Puppy on bass,
Sharif Kellogg of ilyAIMY on piano, and
Rowan Corbett of ilyAIMY and Tinsmith on percussion.

I’m incredibly excited – this is essentially my dream team of musicians, and I always wanted to play with these guys but never thought we could make it happen. As soon as we have some shows booked, I’ll definitely post about it here. Wheeeeee!!

 

Teavolve Open Mic

There’s a lot of back-story to the Teavolve Open Mic that once was and soon shall be again. Let me sum-up:

Last summer, some friends of mine got the opportunity to host a weekly open mic at my favorite Baltimore hang-out, Teavolve Cafe and Lounge. Due to a series of unanticipated cancelations and promotion difficulties, the open mic had a hard time getting and sustaining any attendance. Let me be perfectly clear – I am not blaming the venue, the hosts, the promotion process, or the customers for this open’s mic’s demise. I’m saying a bunch of unfortunate things happened that led to a slow fizzle of a really wonderful open mic at a really wonderful place.

Now, I love this place, and I want to hang out there. I want my friends to hang out there. I want hear my friends play music there. When I heard the open mic was being canceled for good, I approached the owner and opened the lines of communication to see if I might be able to take it over and move it to a different night, so as not to compete with a popular open mic hosted by my friends in the band ilyAIMY. A couple of months passed, and we ended up agreeing that we could make Monday nights happen every single week.

So: starting Monday, March 15, 2010, I will be hosting Teavolve’s new open mic. Sign up starts at 6:30, music will commence at 7:00, and we’ll finish out the night around 10:00. I know this blog entry will be stale in a couple of weeks, but the information here remains the same. Come play some music at Teavolve every Monday night – I would love to see you!