After I had finished blogging, Russell showed up, and we went to the Church Street Graveyard where he interviewed me for a documentary that he is working on. He recorded me playing one of my originals. I am not sure that it came out well enough for me to put it on Facebook or anything, because I hadn't warmed up or stretched my fingers. It was early in the day for me, even though it was 1pm.
That was pretty cool. We ate at a restaurant/art dealer, where worked a poet who has read before at Serda's, during the Songwriter's Open Mic. A poem is close enough to being a song, to be able to read one at Serda's.
Russell agreed to meet me at Serda's, where we would do a song, with myself on guitar and he on harmonica. I decided to polish up a song about the Neil Young concert experience, as I experienced it. I figured the harmonica would go nicely with a song about Neil.
I frantically tried to re-write the thing in the key of his harmonica, and add lots of verses. I drank Earthquake while I did this. The performance was hindered by the fact that we tuned the guitar to the harp onstage, and thus didn't have a lot of leisure to do it. In fact the MC said that if we weren't ready, then he would put the next act on, and we could come back.
I would give the ensuing performance a D+.
I broke my own rules about tuning, and about listening to the whole spectrum of sound.
I was racking my brain for the lyrics that I had penned two hours earlier, while drinking Earthquake Lager, and I was only vaguely aware of Russells situation of having to follow me on the harmonica. I should have repeated the intro a couple of times, instead of going into the lyrics immediately. This would have acclimated the audience to the key of the song. That is a bad habit of mine. Since I know the song, I forget that the audience has never heard it, and could use a couple of runs through the chords before the singing starts. I will have to pay more attention to that.
The poet from the restaurant/art store came and read a few poems.
I wasn't sure how our performance went over. I know it wasn't a huge smash, because nobody was coming up and saying "That was so awesome," or anything like that.
I have an unsettled feeling about it, as if I might have been too drunk on Earthquake to notice that we sounded like crap, if in fact we did.