Orlando Folk Scene

Sunday night I went to a weekly folk music circle that was recommended to me. It has been going on for something like ten years more or less. It's an interesting format. Everybody sits in a circle and one person plays a song, then the person to his or her left plays a song, and you go around and around clockwise all evening. You can play along and back each other up and/or sing harmony if it's a song you happen to know. I played a good bit with the other folks and they even nodded my way to take a solo now and then. I've been in some similar jam type situations where everybody is trying to play over the top of everybody else and it's just an annoying cacauphony. But this was different. People only seemed to play when they had something to contribute and always behind the person whose turn it was and always with effort to enhance that person's performance. Everybody was friendly and kind and supportive of everybody else, encouraging the beginners and praising specific things about more accomplished performances and offering suggestions for this or that. It's a good place to try out new songs on people who will listen and give feedback. Ability is all over the map from raw beginners to some lifetime experienced musicians. The personalities are all over the map as well. All in all a nice group showed up and a few real characters. I'm told it's different every time.

Today was Friday. I was working all week helping my friend move his company from downtown Orlando up to a new office in Lake Mary. I did a lot of unwiring and rewiring of video equipment in racks and editing systems, making shelves, and mounting brackets and whiteboards and such. Anyway, I took a look at my "Friends of Florida Folk" magazine to see if anything might be going on tonight and saw a "first Friday of the month" open mic at a church up in the north part of the city. By the time I had everything dealt with that had to be done, I got there about two hours after it started. But I still watched several people and small groups play and last thing I even did a little looped instrumental thing and two of my new songs. They were very well received. I got lots of requests form folks to be sure to come back and an invitation to come to another popular open mic night. Also a woman who was one of the featured musicians at the Faux Festival, and kind of a fixture in the Orlando folk scene, sought me out afterward and wanted a card and said something about lining up musicians for something or other.

My songs came out very comfortably and I was able to use the JamMan to good effect as I'd always hoped I would be able to - for the instrumental and then just to loop a verse of rythm part at the end of a song while I did a solo over it for the ending. It worked great! For this I just plugged in my Baggs pre, then the Korg PX-2 for a touch of effects to sweeten the guitar tone, then the JamMan and then into the house system. It took about 1 minute. I felt I was really able to emote to the twenty or so people who were still there at the end and I was able to play and sing about as good as I ever can at home alone, so that's a big step. I'm starting to get comfortable. It makes such a huge difference to play to an audience who actually want to listen and who like what you are doing. I don't think I'll ever play in a bar again! I think I'm going to try to hit as many of these open mic nights as I can. Already I saw some familiar faces from Saturday. Some people seem to make the rounds but I understand each one has it's own regulars and it's own flavor. I'm starting to get a feel for the quality norm of the players and their music at these open mics as compared to the musicians that get featured to play whole concerts or sets at various events. I think I've got a good shot at some of the latter. Especially after how it went over tonight. But then, those folks had endured a few truly torturous performances not long before so I suppose that put me in a good light. Several other folks besides the woman I mentioned above talked to me and encouraged me to play at more events. I enjoyed myself and I think I'm going to do more of this kind of thing!

But not for a while. You may notice the blog go quiet here for a while. I have to do some hard traveling next week. It looks like two round trips to Columbia and back to move stuff. Then the next week I have a five day camera job. And the week after that it looks like there may be another trip. (By plane!) No telling how much I'll be able to get on line if at all during all of it. But I should have a story or two when it's over!