This open mic is every Tuesday at 8:00 PM. Signup starts at ~7:30 and that’s where we’ve had issues before. You see, this wasn’t the first time we tried to do this open mic. The first time we tried to play this place, we arrived at ~7:30, and the list was already full. And they allow the signup list to just keep growing! Had we stayed, we would’ve gone on around midnight, so that time we just left and played at Ireland’s Four Courts, which runs a competing open mic at the same time. Unfortunately people sometimes put down their names, leave, and then come back much later, which is very frustrating.

With all that in mind, this time we arrived early – at 6 PM just like it says on their website. And nobody was there! A barren wasteland. Well, except for this badass dude chilling out front named Batist. He welcomed us with open arms and said he was filling in for the normal host. He also told us that it’s happy hour all night for performing musicians, which was wonderful. We made sure everyone around us participated. While participating, we practiced in the side room until it was sign-up time, and we put our name down 5th, which meant we went on around 9. Everybody got to play 3 songs, which is actually really nice, and more than most open mics in the area. That was not the case with our first time here where they were talking about 1 song a piece. It truly was two totally different experiences.

Enough preamble, what about music? There was lots of that. There were singer songwriters everywhere playing folk, country, and coffeehouse rock. We heard songs dedicated to dead friends, plenty of songs about singers’ home states (e.g., Indiana, Georgia), and a cornucopia of home-grown originals. To top it all off, there’s a bottle holder built into the music stands onstage. How classy is that? The night was kicked off by the host of the open mic. He limited his set to a single song to give the rest of the artists extra time to play. He made his gesture more awesome by dedicating a song to the late bassist from YES! who recently passed away. We tip our hat to the host! What a gentleman. May Mr. Chris Squire rest in peace.

The next person we’ll talk about is Audra, better known as Gracious Me. We met her at the bar, and we told her we were a Brittany Spears cover band. She didn’t believe us, so we busted out an a capella version of Hit Me Baby One More Time by Brittany Spears that frankly, as unrehearsed as it was, sounded phenomenal. We’re not quite sure how she took that, but we ended up talking about our Open Mic Challenge, and SHE SAID SHE’S DOING THE SAME THING!

Ok, she might not be doing the exact same thing, but it’s quite close. She’s got a huge list of open mics and she’s hitting them back to back to back in quick succession. It’s impressive, and requires lots of chutzpah because that kind of schedule can be exhausting. We’ve had a week or two like that and it definitely wears on you if you’ve got a full time job (which she does). She’s given us her list of DC area open mics and we’re considering the addition of many of them to our list, but many of her open mics violate our rules by being outside the beltway. But what about her music? It’s folk country and she sang with a very practiced and beautiful voice – and she has stage presence. We couldn’t find any recordings of her online, but we’re very excited to update this line with a link to her future recordings because they will most assuredly be worth the wait.

As for our set – we had a damn good time. We played You and Me, and Spec, VA – both of which went fairly well. We didn’t bring our box drum, so we were just guitar, mando, and cornet since it’s much less gear to bring. The only real issue was that the music stand we setup was pretty low, so Josh couldn’t read the sheet music for his cornet solos. Whatever, lesson learned. He just improvised a bit and all was well. Here we are sharing an awkward glance:

Now let’s take a moment to talk about Josh’s neighbor Chris. While Josh was walking his glorious new puppies the afternoon of the open mic, Chris was also letting out his hounds. Both Josh, Chris, and the dogs chatted, and Chris decided to come on out to The Vinyl Lounge to play the open mic with Josh. Josh said he would sign Chris up…but he had a drink or two and forgot to do so. In recompense, The Capitol Heights volunteered one of their song slots to Chis. And Chris fuckin’ brought the noise. He only played one song, but it was probably the only reggae/rap inspired song of the whole evening, bringing some serious style. He played Molly by BLove, and everyone definitely took notice.

With that, we’ll wind down this post. We’d say that this open mic is a contender for the best in the DC area. The sound system is solid, performers are talented and respectful, it’s professionally run, and there’s lots of spots to practice and store your equipment. The age range and music stylings are similar to that of Iota Club. We’re not quite sure if The Vinyl Lounge > Iota Club, but many people attending the open mic that evening said that it was. We’ve a lot more experience playing Iota and we know everyone there, so we’ll have to head back to The Vinyl Lounge from time to time to get that same bond with the venue. The last thing we wanted to share with you is that there’s a hidden bathroom at the Vinyl Lounge. It’s in the back, and it’s never busy. If you gotta loose it, use it.

Edit: We said the wrong person died and we fixed it. Thanks to Chris Mendelis for reading and pointing out the error!

Arist Info

We can’t find Batist on the internet, so help us! What’s the digital equivalent of a milk carton?

Gracious Me
This wonderful woman can principally be found on her facebook page.

Chris Seikaly
In stalking Chris’ digital life, we’ve seen that he’s been involved in a number of musical projects. Here’s his current project – ABANDONTHESKIES – and make sure to take a listen and check him out on facebook and twitter.

This open mic occurs every Tuesday at 7:30, and is hosted by none other than Gary Ehlers. We met Gary a while back at Outta the Way Cafe, and we all chatted a few more times and viola! We got a Featured Artist spot at Branded ’72. It’s less that we’re good salesmen, and more that Gary’s just a nice dude. But we’ll take what we can get, so we put this show on the books and headed out to Rockville. Has anyone else noticed that Rockville has a suspiciously large amount of open mics?

You might notice from the image above that it was a stormy evening, so we hauled ass into the venue carrying our instruments like the man-beasts we are. The inside of the restaurant is divided into two sections, one with a bar/stage area, the other with lots of booths for chowing down. We got there at around 7 and started putting our instruments and other equipment all the way in the back of the restaurant on the stage side. This place isn’t your average open mic, because there’s a drumset already on stage and everyone seems to be welcome to get up and jam. And that’s precisely what went down all night long! A lot of the night was improvisation from a couple of different folks – which kind of reminded us of DC’s Flashband phenomenon.

After some super small technical difficulties with the PA, Gary and crew kicked off the event with Gary on drums. We heard lots of classic rock favorites from them, and a few other songs we had to google to figure out, which is always good for expanding one’s music vocabulary. The venue’s sound was great and filled the space nicely, and the band was well balanced. They had a pretty tight sound and we LOVED the guitar solos and harmonies. Here is an up-close-and-personal pic of them in action:

Gary and company played for about 30 minutes before it was time for something else, which ended up being a real treat! Two younger dudes – one on guitar and one on bass – who were playing their first show ever on Branded ’72’s stage. Jacob and Ryan Seigal are students of the guitar player who just played with Gary (Samuel Biskin), and they got up and made a musical memory. They played a few covers, with our favorite being a hard-rock version of Sympathy for the Devil by The Rolling Stones. Dudes, we might steal this version from you. It was that good. What was badass is that a) they sounded great, and b) they remembered all the words to the song. It’s a hard song lyrically and the Rolling Stones wrote those B7 chords happening at odd times in the song (see the second verse) so we were impressed. Here they are in action:

After a few more songs from that duo, it was our turn. As you can see in some of the other pictures, there’s a lot of equipment onstage, which made it hard to find a spot for the boxdrum. We were unable to sit next to each other to share our music stand. This caused some difficulties in some of the covers we attempted. We played an original song or two, which went well, and then thought we’d have people in the audience try songswecanplay.com again. It worked well and people requested a bunch of songs and I think we ended up playing Hey Ya by Outkast and Under the Bridge by RHCP.

What kind of performance would it be without a broke string? We recently broke one at our showcase at Iota and then a while back at Republic. So of course it had to happen again! But this happened towards the end of the show, and Kenny thought he’d play a song or two with only 5 strings and it didn’t go that bad. In the end, we got some nice compliments and everyone said we were very physically attractive – or at least that we sounded fairly nice.

After our set, Gary jumped back on stage alongside a different cast of characters for another round of rock and blues. It was great watching them work, reacting to each other and listening even when not all of them knew the song they were playing. Very cool. The night ended with a singer songwriter, which is proof that this place is friendly to the more typical open mic crowd. But the best part of the evening’s end was Kenny jumping onstage to sing Last Dance With Mary Jane by Tom Petty. Here’s a pic:

One lesson was learned that night. No matter how well you know a song – it can go poorly when drinks are involved. So.. Take that into account next time you hit karaoke =].

Apparently, Branded ’72 has to comply with a noise ordinance, so the party shuts down around 11:00 PM, therefore you gotta get your kicks in before then, which is pretty reasonable all things considered. Some DC venues require the music to shut down at ~10 PM, so this isn’t that strange. All in all, if an open mic is what you need – Branded ’72’s got it. Especially if you’re a drummer because it’s not often that a drumset is provided for all to use! Open mics for drummers are hard to find, and the fact that the set is available onstage is absolutely badass.

Artist Info

There was lots of jamming and improv from various people, and there wasn’t a specific group we could easily latch onto here. At the very least we thought we’d call out Gary!

Gary Ehlers
An international man of mystery, Gary can be found on his facebook and you definitely want to follow him if you’re interested in music performance in the DC and Maryland areas. He’s also recently started up a new band called 3 Song Sadie!

Jacob Seigal & Ryan Seigal
We don’t have any links for these guys, but we LOVE what they did that night and wish them the best moving forward.

When we arrived, it was already gettin’ busy, and Rob greeted us by means of facehug – it was awesome. Immediately after the facehug, Jonathan Coulton’s RE: Your Brains song came on inside the restaurant and we knew we were finally at home. Surveying the location, there were board games as far as the eye could see. Naturally we attempted to play Scrabble using words that would do our mother’s shame, while we waited for our excellent food. While we waited, more and more people arrived, filling up the cafe. We ended up talking to the owner Brian, good chap ‘e is, who said the whole place was built and modeled with live music in mind, which assuredly shows from the layout and acoustics. BTW – this is a facehug:

Rob and crew went first and ilyAIMY flew like it always does – like a flock of geese all hopped up on meth goin’ south for the winter. I mean, how else can we describe their energy? But right in the middle of their first song Rob broke a string and I shit you not he plucked a hair from his head and replaced the string mid-song. Ok. That’s a lie. But he recovered well and got right back into it. They even thad those hand-clacker-things which really made their set distinctive. Speaking of distinctive, watch Rob’s guitar playing – those fingers just move. Yeah he’s got a great voice (Josh kinda thinks he sounds a little like himself), and they write serious songs, but those guitar chops… Watch him slap his guitar and strike the strings with his fingers covered in tape. We’ll drop a YouTube video here where you can watch for yourself!

There were a LOT of acts that followed. We are unable to write about them all. Why? Truthfully….well, because we were busy playing Scrabble. One of our favorite other acts was an a capella version of Radioactive by Imagine Dragons. Another was a gent in a Star Trek shirt that played a single 10 minute electronic song with one of those DJ button pads. There’s definitely some diversity in music here with even country being represented!

But one of our favorites for the evening was Nathan Tennyson, who played a coupl’a different tunes, all with a Maryland-flag laden guitar! Def deeelish. He could solo like mad and his fingers have the tone you can only dream of. He played To Be Alone by Hozier, which was absolutely wonderful! He sang the song down a few steps, which is crazy, because the song already starts out pretty low. People with low voices don’t get enough credit and this guy stole the show in that regard. Nathan played with the practiced fingers of a musician who loves his craft. He was seriously solo-ing like mad – recognize, son!

Here’s where we’ll take a moment to provide a little bit o’ backstory. Rob had told us that some folks from University of Maryland would be streaming this event and posting it to YouTube. Because of this, the use of profanity is severely discouraged. Rob had told us this information weeks before at our We Are the 9 show, but we had forgot! And then he reminded us in email also. Why is this important? A few reasons. We noticed that Rob was providing these really funny intros for each performer. We thought we’d be funny and ask him to read a hilarious, yet profanity-laden intro off the back of a napkin. We didn’t understand why he was changing some words, so we happily screamed the profanity for him to go for the assist (sports reference!). Then we played “What I Got” by Sublime, which has LOTS of…”adult themes”. By this time we remembered his very reasonable request, but it’s hard to censure over half the song so we just made up words. People seemed to laugh a bit.

In regards to our next song, a few days before this show, we decided we’d play Round Here by The Counting Crows. Kenny already knew it, so Josh just had to learn to play 3 different notes on the mandolin and we were set. Listen to the song – you’ll understand. We got off a bit, ever so slightly, but we don’t think anyone noticed. A point of order here is that the mando doesn’t seem to stay in tune that well when we’re playing higher up on the fretboard. But the song went great and people seemed more than genuinely impressed – Kenny sang the hell out of it. So why don’t we have any video of it? Well, our notes for the evening just say “camera explosion” because right near the beginning of our set the camera Rob had setup fell over and slammed into the ground causing a raucous calamity. Was it a conspiracy against us for cussing and ruining his event? YOU DECIDE. If it was… we deserved it and we’re really sorry Rob. : (

The next act we’ll cover here is Zach Parkman and company. Zach had a full band playing along with him, and Juels from The Republic was playing with ’em! Definitely cool to begin to see some of the same faces. We don’t think this was a “featured spot” for Board and Brew, but this band capped off the evening with a strong showing. Their original songs were great and reminded us of “sad and yet hipster as f*ck” country music. They probably gave the best performance of the evening, sounding just as majestic as lions look.

To summarize – this was a great open mic! It’s so good that you’re lucky if you get to go. It was well organized, on time, had great performers and a nice number of people of generally younger folks in attendance.

Artist Info

ilyAIMY
Rob runs a bunch of open mics that can be viewed on USTREAM. We really want to give these guys the full Capitol Heights’ treatment, so we’re placing their information here again even though we’ve written them up before. This dynamic trio is available at www.ilyaimy.com. Frankly that’s all you need, but they’ve got a facebook, YouTube, and on twitter with the handle @ilyaimy! In thanks, every should go visit the open mics that he graciously runs!

Nathan Tennyson
We contacted Nathan and he doesn’t seem to have anything to advertise. But he’s so damn good that he needs to share himself to the world. Therefore, we’re probably going to harass him until he puts up a music page or issues a restraining order against us. Our edict has been issued, Nathan.

Zach Parkman and Company
Zach has a facebook page and his twitter handle is @zachparkman. The music from his Reverb Nation page is below!

Juels Bland
Juels’ music can be found at his bandcamp page or via his Soundcloud, embedded below for your listening pleasure.

So what is Rosies and Rockers? It’s a hip-as-hell clothing boutique venue located in the heart of the U St. neighborhood. What’s more important than the heart … the brain? Rosies and Rockers is located at the cerebral cortex of U St. There’s lots of unique and bespoke pieces of clothing, jewelry, and other accoutrements at the shop that give it a unique vibe. Speaking of unique, we met one of the co-owners named Mateen who was a riot. Had we gone down in flames, it would of been worth it just to meet this guy. Using the interweb as the ultimate creepy tool, here are some of his facebook statuses:

• My lemonade contains artificial flavoring. My laundry detergent contains real lemons. F*ck everything.
• Never make eye contact while eating a banana.
• Best advice I’ve ever got, Study or else you’ll have to be a stripper.
• Some questions just answer themselves. Like, sit-ups or pizza?
• The bills are washed, the dishes are paid, the laundry’s in the oven. I’m going to bed.
• I bet giraffes don’t even know what farts smell like.

Even if he gets mad about us doing this… #YOLO.

Mateen decided to work with DC Music Download to have an open mic contest here. At the point of this performance, we had done well over 20 open mics in the past year, many multiple times because they were fun as hell, so we thought we might have a decent chance of winning. The grand prize? Opening for a large band at Comic Ping Pong. Well that’s enough to bring the talent out.

Before we get too far into things, here’s a wallpaper for your laptop – it’s the mural painted on the side of the Rosies & Rockers check-out counter and we absolutely loved it! So feel free to download, act like Massachusetts, and use it liberally.

One of the first folks we met was Dedwax and he was up first. We were able to speak with him both before and after his set and he seemed like a really nice guy. If memory serves us right, he gave us one of his slick business cards (which always reminds us of how we want/need some…). His set was pretty solid and he came off as if he had been doing this for a while. He had a somewhat bluesy sound that incorporated a grunge style. His voice is reminiscent of Pete Yorn, and he puts a lot of emotion with dynamic range in his music.

Our set went superb. We feel like we never say that and that we’re too hard on ourselves on this blog, so that’s great to be able to express. Everyone’s performance was acoustic, and when that’s sitch it’s much easier for us because we can hear the same sound everyone else is hearing. And this time it went off without a hitch (what the hell does that expression mean anyway?). We played Sequestered Together and You and Me and we were worried the cornet would be too loud inside, but it seemed to go well enough. We were a little nervous because everyone was so close. Proximity to crowd prolly plays a role in nerves.

Starranko was up after us and this dude was fun to watch and listen to. He used an amp to play his backing tracks, which were all original and really, really good. Some serious production went into them. It was awesome actually because at one point there were sirens in the background from a police car and it totally sounded like it was part of the backing track. We didn’t know until the police cruiser went by in the background, which made him look EVEN MORE cool. He also had some of his friends play some slick as hell guitar licks in the background. We actually haven’t seen many hip hop acts on our open mic tour, so Starranko was a breath of fresh air. He was practiced, articulate, and had some intelligent and funny lyrics (“My GPS can’t be tracked“). Here he is mid-set:

There were a bunch of other acts – even a 10 year old – and this one woman from NYC came in at the last minute and we thought she was a DC Music Download ringer so nobody would win the prize. Who won? Well, that was up to the judges. There were real judges. How? DC Music Download picked non-partial folks out the crowd. We were worried. But in the end – they chose us! It was really great! Josh was nervous and Kenny was going all “Kenye” acting cool like he didn’t care but he super did. It really meant a lot to us after all this work over the past year. Starranko won the second spot and we were definitely concerned he would take first.

Mateen said that there were going to be more unique performances at the store once a month, everything from drag shows to circus acts to more music, and we’re definitely glad we went and were part of the show! The only thing we sort of had an issue with is storage space for instruments . . . but it’s a clothier – what do you expect?! Shutup and get dressed, preferably with Rosie’s jeans. Hawt.

We’re apparently going to be opening for a larger act at Comet Ping Pong in June. We can’t wait!

Artist Info

Mateen
We hardly know the guy, but he’s got some serious personality. You should go check out his store, which truly is one of those wonderful local shops you should be proud to have in your neighborhood.

www.rosiesandrockers.com
2001 13th St NW, Washington, DC 20009
(202) 328-7625

Dedwax
Dedwax’s has a facebook page and his main site is www.dedwax.com. His music video is fucking magical.

Here’s his Soundcloud.

Starranko
Starranko has a facebook page and his twitter handle is @starranko. His soundcloud is embedded below:

This place is popular and I’m not joking. Lots of artists & Lots of crowd. Frankly even the crowd had talent. So everybody only got to play 2 songs a piece, which was fine because the variance in styles made the night a great excuse to chat with people while being randomly interrupted by music. In terms of sign-up, the list was full by 8:30. Completely full. Lleno. Whoa. This is one of those open mics that produce – it’s a true box social – and we would kind of compare it to Iota Club in Clarendon in that respect. The event started a little after 9, which was basically on time, and is impressive from open mics standards. When we walked in, we quickly found a problem… where do we put Paul Bunyan’s keyboard? All the artists had placed their instruments in this one corner of the room, but there was a lot of storage elsewhere in the facility. Here’s what we saw.

A gent named Juels hosts the event and in usual open mic fashion, he started the evening by makin’ some noise. But he wasn’t alone! He had Joey on the cajón and what a dapper and daft duo they were. Juels’ voice is on the high side, Adam Levinesque, and much of what they played was in a minor key and delicately swung. And each second Joey spent “cajón-ing” caused ripples in space-time since the drumbeat had such depth. Their cover of Elton John’s Rocket Man was sweet and hauntingly melodic and brought me back to a time when I first fell in love with that song in Austin, Texas. 10/10 would listen again. (HINT HINT record it Joey & Juels!). Here they are mid-song:

Some “guy” from “Colorado” was up next – known as W.L. Bishop – and he definitely grabbed our attention. He had a raspy voice, knew how to finger the fretboard, and had solid stage presence. We stole him from his female companion after his performance and started chatting with him only to find he’s from GEORGIA TECH. Pssh Colorado – what lies! We’ve all probably played some of the same venues before and maybe even know some of the same folks. How cool! Our favourite song that he sung was Chandeliers in The Sky and Josh said it was good and so it was. Meeting someone else from GA up here in a serendipitous fashion was wonderful. And it sounds like he’s in the midst of doing what we’re doing – getting to know the local music scene and identifying a group of people to join his cult (i.e., building a fanbase), and we’re definitely going to keep up with him if he allows it. But we’d totally understand if he doesn’t.

Now on to Warner Williams and honestly, I did not know who this guy was before looking him up. Apparently he’s a living legend and was “recently honored alongside B.B. King and John Lee Hooker as one of the nation’s greatest traditional artists” according to the Washington Post. I mean, that’s highly legit. How legit is this guy? Donning a sleek stetson, he sat down, pulled out his guitar, and started playing what we recognized as old-time tunes (e.g., Comin’ ’round the mountain, Home on the range) with different lyrics. For every single classic he had all new words – interesting. He even played songs that my soul knew but my brain couldn’t quite touch – annoying tip of the tongue stuff! He actually played around 6 – 8 tunes onstage throughout the night because other folks got him to come on up and play with him. Go buy his album. For America.

Little People of America (LPA) defines dwarfism as a medical or genetic condition that usually results in an adult height of 4’10” or shorter, among both men and women…” Setup wasn’t that odious but the keyboard requires 2 inputs and that seemed to cause some issues with the PA. Whatever, we figured them out. That was the whole point of lugging it out of the house. Once we got the keyboard all setup… Kenny switched instruments to guitar and we played Sublime first. And of course to wreck the evening… a STRING BROKE. Whatever Kenny keeps playing. Then he BREAKS HIS PICK. Whatever he keeps playing by switching the side of the pick that he was using. THEN THAT BROKE TOO. It was a vicious cycle. But the band kept playing and it went pretty well overall.

Next UP WAS KEYBOARD TIME AND IT WENT SO WELL YAY. Seriously we were quite excited about it. Kenny clicked the button, and the backing track started to play. It was so badass. And who’s guitar is Josh using there? Non-other than Mr. Warner Williams’ guitar! But unfortunately, we think he tuned it without using a tuner…so it wasn’t tuned to a standard E. Josh didn’t want to make Mr. Williams feel bad so he just faked playing it the whole time which was fine – he got to hear that sweet, sweet giant keyboard. Here’s a pic of us using it for the first time. We can tell this pic was taken at around 2:26 seconds within the song because that’s the only time both of our mouths would be going “ooooooooo” like that.

And a BIG thanks to W.L. for the pics – he was a champ for helping us out and taking them. We knew we could trust another Georgia boy.

At this point so many people had shown up that the open mic had to change to only one song per person! Dang. We spent the rest of the evening chilling and talkin with folks – it was excellent. But here’s where things started to get pear shaped. Apparently there’s no Uber XLs in Takoma Park at 2 AM on a Sunday night. None. Zero. We called our wives – they were sleeping or at least pretending to be. (We totally understand.) We saw there were Uber XLs in DC … and we devised a scheme to lure an Uber XL out to Takoma. It’s not that far. How did we do this? We lied about our location and put it as the farthest point from DC that was closest to Takoma that the Uber XL would drive to. Right when they go to the point we cancelled, and then put our true location … they might as well pick us up right since they are all the way out there? We lured with Kenny’s Uber account and then Josh’s Uber account called cleanup. It eventually worked because we’re dishonest geniuses.

While we were waiting, we just talked with Juels and company and then packed up to head out. And what did we find? The tambourine was missing!!!!! We had lost our first red tambourine at Iota about a month ago (yes sometimes we play shows that the we don’t write about, calm down) and this was tambourine number 2. And someone straight ganked it. Let it be known on this day – if we ever find out who you are – punishments will be created, and enforced. You can see the beautiful instrument in the picture of instruments up above. So sad, but Republic, you were an excellent adventure.

Artist Info

Juels Bland
Juels’ music can be found at his bandcamp page or via his Soundcloud, embedded below for your listening pleasure.

Warner Williams
Man this guy’s everywhere! Just type his name into Google. His Spotify is below, where we’ve embedded our favorite album of his. Here’s a link to the page telling the story of him winning the National Heritage Award.

W.L. Bishop
WL’s album can be found below on Soundcloud and his main page is right here.

Let’s paint the scene folks, ya know we gotta. It’s Saint Patrick’s Day and we decided to play at a German pub. Seems like a good idea, right? Agreed. Sauf Haus is a fairly new beer joint, located in the greater DuPont area and we’ve oft’ participated in their festivities, revelries, and ibibed away our discretionary income with ease. So this was a relatively known spot for us. The place consists of a giant staircase that feels like that infinity staircase from Mario 64, a large open-air deck with more varieties of german beer than there are Germans, and a side area that’s enclosed but much smaller. The also sell 2 lb pretzels. Don’t skimp on the pretzel – we didn’t. (WARNING: this pic wasn’t taken the same night.)

We got there at around 7 PM but the open mic started ’bout 9 PM. (Aside – There seems to be a slight theme appearing regarding Open Mic information saying “oh we start SUPER early and ya better get here on time!” and the actual start time is quite a bit later.) Whatever, we are AMERICAN and will drink lots of beer on a fake Irish drinking day. When we arrived at the fairly dark inside bar, it was absolutely packed. No place to put our instruments. No place to put our giant oversized beers. There was barely even room to setup the PA system.

And who did we find setting up that PA? None other than our old friend Alex El Rojo Parez from Iota club! That was absolutely wonderful news because we figured we had an ‘in‘ of some sort. Maybe we could scam some extra set time outta him? We’re always dismayed at the fact that we can play only 2 – 3 songs at an open mic. Once everything was set up, Alex played a couple of songs which kicked off the evening just right! Alex’s playlist is never predictable, and this night we enjoyed his Johnny Cash covers the most because Josh is going through a no-holds-barred Johnny Cash obsession as of late. On a side note, it seems to us that Alex has been performing a lot lately, and it maybe it was the beer, or some other mysterious factor like “practice”, but his voice seemed a little bit deeper and seemed to resonate a little bit further since the first time we heard him play almost 6 months ago. Here’s some pics of him pickin’. And just to be clear, that’s not a symbol inside of a word bubble, he’s actually just saying “eighth note, eighth note.”

Just like Iota, Sauf Haus has featured artists, which is pretty sweet! Unfortunately we got caught up <wink>in the spirit of St. Patrick’s Day</wink> and we didn’t grab the featured artist’s name. But here’s what I did grab in my notes about the evening on my phone – his voice was sweet and his guitaring was trubadoric. His guitar also had uncut crazy strings at the top which always looks badass. Maybe we need to do that for style points.

So around this time it was our turn to go up – our guitar and mandolin waving in the air like crazy flags while riding a jet black jeep with no top on it, slowly walking up there like bosses. There should’ve been slow motion Michael Bay-esque explosions behind us. To top it all off, in a recent practice session of spontaneity, Josh had decided to learn the whole evening’s set on mandolin, including the solo from Sublime’s What I Got the day before so we figured we would play our new song You and Me and the Sublime cover. This way, we could get away without carrying two guitars, which makes life simpler for instrument transport. Practicality people, practicality! And here’s where things start to get crazy. Let me go ahead and start a new paragraph. We’re gonna need the room.

The two could celebrate the ease and practicality of instrument transport now, but they will soon find the treachery of carrying around a giant keyboard. Thoughts such as: “what were we thinking?” will race through their minds.

Our set went pretty damn well. There is no other way to say it and we feel like we really needed it after the last lackluster performance. Our harmonies were good. Nobody forgot lyrics. Our instruments gelled like Dr. Scholl’s … screw that they gelled like those way more expensive Bircketstock gel-sole inserts. Yeah you thought we’re going to get to the good stuff? But not here – nah, we got off the stage and started to say thank you for the nice people who were showering us with compliments. (Ok we’re taking all of this a little too far.) We regressed to our table and accidentally stumbled upon Justin Trawick who is pretty heavily involved in the DC music scene and is also a full time musician branded under the name (shocked expression!) Justin Motherfuckin’ Trawick. Ok, ok… the expletive in the middle isn’t actually there in his name. But Justin and his female friend were super cool and they made conversation with the band for quite some time. We exchanged information and went our separate ways.

This woman Colleen was up next and … honestly, she was a refreshing sound at this sausagefest of an open mic. She rocked the ukulele, an absolutely sick pair of pipes, AND she played a mix of covers and original songs. (That’s always our preferred setlist – show people you can actually make music but make sure you bring the party.) Her cover of Jessie J’s Price Tag was great and the whole bar sang along with her! Her voice came through as VERY on pitch, a little soft without too much air, and nearly perfect intonation on each note. Nearly. We heard that one fuckup Colleen (j/k). Although not new to DC, she’s new to the DC music scene, coming straight outta choral practice to show us what’s what. She really is just getting started so hit her page with some love. Here she is in all her glory…and a little bit fuzzy because our camera doesn’t do well in low-light situations…but it still looks reasonably cool!

Justin came over during Colleen’s performance and asked if he could use Josh’s guitar. Josh looked him up and down judging the very heart of his soul like all men do, provided a positive response, and then Justin took the instrument away to the sidelines to have his way with it. The next time I saw my sweet bae, Justin was releasing a typhoon of original tunes on the wetlands of our ears. If ya haven’t heard, he helps run a podcast and created a fairly prestigious concert series so you should take a listen to those. Now I know we’ve done it on a lot of posts, but we have to emphasize how much different some of these full-time, professional musicians sound when compared to those of us out here in amateur-land. Some may say it’s evidenced in songwriting but what is most important to me is tone – and Justin had so much he was sweating it out. We bottled some for later use, don’t worry.

At this point Alex decided that he would allow everyone to sing more songs because everyone who’d signed up to play had already done so – but there was still more time for the open mic! At this point, our memories aren’t exactly full of details, so we’re not exactly clear about what happened, but somehow, Josh, Kenny, and Colleen all ended up on stage playing an impromptu version of Third Eye Blind’s Jumper. Everyone started singing along with the Third Eye Blind song and it was a hit! We were told then that we would have two more songs and Colleen would play next. Totally cool. We’re not exactly sure how this happened either (WHY ARE DETAILS SO IMPORTANT AND WE DON’T WE HAVE ANY OF THEM?!) but people started asking what other songs we could play and can we play “that one Sublime song” again? Most of the crowd had cycled out so we said sure. Here’s a not-too-secret fact: Josh and Kenny don’t know that many songs on mandolin. Therefore, if we were going to use the guitar and mandolin combo, we had to ration our songs and use them sparingly. Repeats started to sound like a good idea.

We’re not even sure what songs we played next but somehow Colleen didn’t get her turn to jump on stage for more songs. We felt real bad about that (sorry Colleen!) but we at least had the crowd and the crowd had us. True love at last (sorry wives.) Everyone started requesting songs and we kept playing them. Eventually, we put down the mando and Josh just sang while Kenny played guitar. Everyone at the place was dancing and singing and it was an altogether surreal experience. We basically kept playing until we were out of songs, which took some time!!

Here’s an odd afterthought. Everyone kept asking us “Can you play [my favorite song]?”. We also feel like we’ve forgotten more songs than we’ve learned how to play, so we kept randomly remembering that we could play songs…which was a giant cluster F*&!. We ended up purchasing www.songswecanplay.com. That way we can just host a page with the list of all the songs we know. Now, when people say “Can you play [some song]”, we respond with “Just go to songs we can play dot com for a full list.” Maybe this will come in handy!

All-in-all a great night. Sauf Haus wasn’t soft at all. It rocked. Hard.

Artist Info

Alex “El Rojo” Robert Parez
Alex has his twitter, facebook, and a reverb nation where you can hear some of his music.

Colleen McCracken
Since Colleen’s just gettin’ started, she ain’t got too much of a web presence, but you can check her out here.

Justin Trawick
Justin’s main page is justintrawick.com. His podcast is A Circus Life, and his concert series is We Are the 9. All of which are worth checking out. Seriously. Stop reading. Go. Listen to his stuff. Go.

Ok fine. We’ll tell you a little more about this place. First thing’s first – this place was fun. For other people. Trust us, we saw their smiles, but for us, it ended up being series of screw ups. But we’ll go into the experience in awkward detail for the sake of the blog.

This was our first performance for the open mic challenge in 2015. There were some big Christmas shake-ups like Josh getting married and we hadn’t been paying too much attention to band things. So when DC had a giant snow storm, then an ice storm, then another snow storm and DC started to look like that slushy you left in your car overnight… we thought we’d have some fun and go play at an open mic. Without practicing. It made sense right? We played so many open mics last year, and what could go wrong with playing out without practicing? We don’t need no stinkin’ practice.

Second things second the Outta the Way Cafe really is out of the way. It’s a good 15 minutes from the Rockville metro stop and as we were driving there we began to become kind of worried we were going the wrong direction. It was dark but eventually we saw the sign and saw some folks unloading a drumkit. We walked in and surveyed the place and it seemed like where we were heading. A large wooden interior divided into a restaurant and a bar. Folks were moving chairs and tables to make room for performers and setting up a PA. We had a drink at the bar and met John V who was running this gig.

The open mic started a little after 9 PM. We got there a little too early to sign up so we performed our duty to God & Country by chit-chatting with the other artists while we “refreshed” ourselves. The sign-up sheet started to make the rounds around 8:40 and we signed-up third. John brought some of his friends along who graciously offer to backup anyone who requests their assistance. They played for about 20 minutes before passing the hat off to other folks, and trust me – these guys were pretty intense! Obviously well practiced and more than a little classy. These guys stretched their musical spirits to multiple genres from folk, to blues, to rock. Here’s John alongside his buds Gary E (drums) and Gary D (bass). Unfortunately Vadim (keys) is out frame – sorry man!

Eventually it was our turn to go onstage. The setup was taking longer than usual and we started chatting a lot. Way more than normal. Now folks have told us that we’ve got pretty good stage banter (whatever the hell that means) but eventually someone said “actually play something.” People were getting bored. Our first song went ok – not awful, not great – but the next song was a disaster. Kenny had the mandolin and Josh thought it would be great to play the Death Cab for Cutie song. That song is fairly complicated on guitar, and even more so on mandolin. (Keep in mind neither of us have been playing mandolin long.) Josh kind of pushed Kenny into playing it, ignoring Kenny’s “protestations” or “purveying his countenance”. And it went absolutely terrible. Literally the worst song ever played live ever. And once about seven years ago we got off the stage due to some technical difficulties.

I was going to stop talking about the awfulness here, but someone said it might be interesting to hear what a musician is thinking about when a song is going poorly. For us … the first that happens is that you detect that something is wrong, and sometimes you don’t know exactly why. We noticed it when Josh was playing C Major but Kenny was playing A minor. But that only lasts for a second or two. Then big issues start to crop. The chord that is out of key (E Major) was startlingly bad and it felt like we got slammed by those 2 DJs from Scott Pilgrim in that music fight scene. And the whole time you have to keep playing and singing knowing how bad it is. Nobody wants to be there but everyone’s stuck. It feels like when your Dad said “go pick out which belt” but that feeling lasts for about 4 minutes and 30 seconds. Being extremely embarrassed, we knew we probably had to get the hell off the stage.

John said that everybody gets about 3 songs or 15 minutes. Folks can come back up if everybody gets a turn. Therefore, we had one more chance – so we went to our tried and true song of Wagon Wheel and then proceeded to mess the lyrics up pretty bad. Eventually some of the guys from the blues band hopped on stage with us and started playing piano and some other stuff. They were really cool about it, but we were happy to get off and go home. Mercy!

We talked with John a little later about the performance and he had a really cool point: “Praise…. credit where due. Pro musicians getting up and playing is great… but they are SUPPOSED to be good. Folks like you who are putting themselves on the line without a net deserve all the support in the world and thats why I like these things.” Dude John – that’s classy as hell and a kick-ass quote! You made some warm-and-fuzzies appear in our hearts.

We didn’t think we were going to mention any bands or people in this article because we didn’t want anyone to be associated with a negative post. But other than John, we at least wanted to mention the fact that we saw a great band called Waring Station. They had a great vibe, were really chill, and made us feel like we were the old guys on stage which … I guess … is starting to happen as we inch closer to 30. Their cover of What I Got by Sublime got great applause and they played this song and jammed out for about 5 to 7 minutes. Everyone loved it and they deserve to be applauded and lauded for their excellent performance. So we’re hoping to send some web traffic their way!

Here’s a video of their performance that night!

So that’s about it. The venue and folks were seriously great. The sound system was solid and John mixed everyone like the boss he is. And there’s plenty of places to put your instruments. It’s a must – especially if you live close!

Artist Info

John Vengrouskie
John is part of a band called The Capital Blues Ensemble. Their facebook page is at this link. It looks like they get booked a lot – and for good reason – so you should check out their site to see why! Here’s a video of them.

Waring Station
Waring station has a facebook page and they look like they are having TONS of fun!

Note: We know that Gary E runs another open mic so we’ll be seeing him in the VERY near future.

Now this stop on our Open Mic Challenge is a little different than many of the others, insofar as it’s such a classy affair. We aren’t joking. (Although we almost wore suits just to mess with them.) There’s no dust and no grime here like a normal open mic – just the air of a wonderful community meeting to share their talents. Here’s a view of what the mansion looks like from the inside.

The open mic occurs once a month, starts at around 8 PM, and costs $10 for entry. Getting there around 7:45 is fine. Josh had played the Mansion before alongside a friend so we knew what to expect but this was the first time The Capitol Heights arrived in full force. Shellie Williams, the director for Arts Barn and also runs Arts on the Green, was there to greet us both times and ensured the event moved along smoothly. To kick off the night, Shellie was asking the patrons if they liked the room setup and was soliciting other types of feedback. That was very cool to see the venue so proactive in making their event even better, especially since this open mic opened for the first time late last year.

One of the coolest parts about this place is that they have a classically trained pianist on staff named Harold Walbert. He seemed happy to play whatever a performer desired, especially if you bring sheet music. Last time Josh played this place, he played Hallelujah, and asked Harold to play along. Josh asked if he could change a chord from minor to major (b/c Kenny had shown him the E major sounds better than the E minor) and Harold said sure and rolled with it. We also saw him sightread scores from showtunes – so confirmed: he’s got mad finger-chops. You can see him pictured above at the piano.

One of our favorite things on this open mic journey is seeing so many different types of entertainment and this place offers storytellers, comedians, musicians, and even dramatic readers. One of our favorite acts of the evening was Bob Schwartz who’s a storyteller and comic. Unfortunately, our photo of him was from far away and it was a little dark but his routines can be found on YouTube and you should at least click this video embed to see the first few minutes of his act. He makes us laugh and it’s great to see him having a great time doing what he does best!

Next up was Shannon Frank (ukelele) and Joe Dito (guitar). We b-lined for them right when they arrived because Shannon was holding a cool looking uke and Joe had a sweet-ass hat. We knew they were going to be interesting and their version of Lion Heart by Of Monsters and Men left an impression. It really was a great performance and I felt like Shannon sounded a LOT like Nanna Hilmarsdóttir (original singer) even though she wasn’t doing any sort of Icelandic accent. Look below to links to some of their videos. Here’s a pic of ’em in action, but we didn’t get the uke because it was covered by a music stand. We are le sad.

We played after the Shannon/Joe duo and it was memorable to say the least. You see, what had happened was, we emceed and played a charity event earlier that same day. We shouted and sang and caused a lot of rabble. Then, after refreshments, we went to the Kentlands Mansion. This situation, in cahoots with a cold that wouldn’t go away after 2 weeks, was the reason Josh lost his voice in the middle of a song. But there’s even more. Harold began playing Journey, and Josh freaked out and started singing at the top of his lungs. This definitely didn’t do him any favors. It was awful!! He hit a hight note, felt a little twinge, and then his voice more or less flatlined.

Kenny took over the rest and finished the song with a solid solo performance. It was awful, and embarrassing, but the crowd seemed pretty cool about it which really really speaks volumes about the atmosphere at Kentlands. It really is a great place for everyone to get together. One thing that’s really cool about this place is that it’s truly family friendly, and it would be an excellent venue for a budding musician’s first performance. Hell, I was even worried about saying “H-E-double hockey sticks”. Most open mics in the area can’t say that AT ALL. Many of our favorite Kentlands / Arts Barn acts can be found on YouTube, which is very cool that Montgomery County is so engaged in their local music and arts scene. (EDIT: YOU MUST BE 17+ PLUS AND THIS WAS A HILARIOUS AND BIG ERROR.)

Artist Info

Shannon Frank & Joe Dito
They have a lot of videos on the enternets and they seem quite active in the local music scene. You can catch some of their videos on YouTube. We can’t find any official web presence for their troubadourium, but we’ll update here if we find anything.

Bob Schwartz
Bob’s Youtube Channel is SchwartzBwithYou.

The open mic attracts a lot of characters and we met all of ’em this fateful evening. The open mic listing says the open mic starts at 8 PM, and we got there about 30 minutes before that to sign up. They were clearing tables and setting up equipment so you probably don’t need to get here that early. We had some friends showing later that night, so we signed up as forth in line, which was ultimately a bad move.

The open mic is run by a nice fine gent (we happened to lose his name!) who opened up the evening by playing some acoustic songs. He was obviously a tremendous musician and his funky version of amazing grace was our favorite. He got the whole place singing and dancing and moving and was dropping some country rock guitar riffs quite hard. One he was finished, the line of troubadours marched on. Here’s a pic of him in action:

The next person up was named Rick who hailed from Philadelphia, and said he played bluegrass punk. We didn’t know what that even meant, but – true to form – he was wild, he was crazy, he was yellin’ and tearin’ and screamin’ – and his music had a tinge o’ twang to it. We later posted a video to our Facebook of him stating “just the facts” in which he used some colorful profanity to describe how cool our band is. We won’t quote it, you can find it on our Facebook page. Here’s Rick!

At this point, the other musicians ahead of us decided that they were not going to play that evening. Our friends were chilling at the Bier Baron next door and hadn’t made it to the venue yet. To give ’em more time, we asked if there was anyway we could wait on our friends for a few minutes. A person who seemed to have authority said “sure”, and their house DJ (did I neglect to mention that?) pushed play on the DJ machine for a few minutes. Eventually, after… say 15 minutes?… we realized they ain’t here yet and we’re holding up the whole shindig. So we hopped onstage.

That night, our buddy Will joined us. He’s a violinist and avid listener of “old-time” music, he’s been Josh’s friend over the past few years. (He’s pictured above in the Totally Just Coffee pic.) Will and Josh had met to play Wagon Wheel and some other Old Crow Medicine Show tunes, and tonight was the night the scheduling gods were happy and everybody was able to make it out to play together. To make it happen, we practiced as a trio for the first time ever that night before the Soho performance. Since practice, we had consumed some “potent potables” so we were ripped ‘n roarin’ and ready to go. We opened – sans Will – with I’ll Follow You Into the Dark by Death Cab for Cutie. Kenny played mando and Josh played the 6 string. It was a decent performance. Then we played our original song Sequestered Together with Kenny playing guitar and Josh only singing. It actually went wonder’fly and we NAILED the difficult vocal harmonizations at the end. Will popped on stage next and we had a great go of it. He played masterfully, and maybe due to the new energy he brought, we seriously played a great show! Probably one of our favorite performances. We then finished up with our rendition of Wagon Wheel, complete with violin! Will’s performance was excellent and we used one of the vocal mics to amp up his sound. Will really completed the song and the crowd loved it!

The next performer was a wonderful woman named Addie who sang with a ukelele and a guitar. Apparently she was a trained Jazz singer and it showed. Her voice was stellar! She sang some songs and told some stories and it was all a treat. Our favorite song she sang was “Santa Baby”. She may have forgot some of the words near the bridge (who knows all the words to that song anyway?), but I’m pretty sure we forgot some words to Wagon Wheel. We, of all people, cannot fault anybody for forgetting lyrics. Her rendition is definitely worth recording.

Y’all need to check her out. We helped her tape her performance, so if the technorati blesses us, maybe we’ll have a video to post!

The final performer of the evening that we’ll cover was a rapper known as The D. He was really emotional about his music which was great to see. It was obvious that he was proud, a little nervous, and thrilled to be on stage. He used his phone to play his beats, via an auxiliary cable which was then connected to the PA. He was a great performer and it was an experience to see him put so much heart into his performance. His songs discussed growing up in New York and he was dosing everybody with 2 teaspoons of nostalgia.

All in all, it was an excellent night. The sound system was quite good and didn’t get too loud for the room we were occupying. Instrument storage wasn’t an issue, as there was plenty of room. This place is a serious open mic contender for the title of Best in DC.

Artist Info

Will Horton
Will is a friend who we hope will stick around to play some more shows with us in the future. He doesn’t have an online music presence at the moment, but if you follow The Capitol Heights around you’re guaranteed to see him at some point.

Addie Stan
Addie’s twitter handle is @addiestan.

The D
The D’s Clark Kent is Jonathan Panczyk. We were unable to find any pages for his music, but if anybody knows his page, please pass it along to us!