Live...at last!

Last night I played in front of an audience for the first time in several years. A local music store (Front Porch Music) hosts "Open Stages" in their basement every Thursday. There's a featured performer who plays for 20 minutes or so, then whoever showed up to participate does 2-3 songs. Pretty standard "open mic" format, only usually a lot more interesting.

At any rate, the last time I tried an Open Stage was around 2004, when I was trying play this mopey, weepy, "serious" songwriter crap. The kind of thing that's wonderful in the right hands, but apparently awful in mine. I brought the yellow "Don Gato" CBG and signed up to play, with my wife as my official videographer. I got a few questions before the music started, but most people didn't seem to notice me.

I'm not one to experience stage fright, but there was a point when I was thinking, "I have got to sell this. I can not get up there and get sheepish about it." I noticed the stage was basically a little wooden porch about four inches off the ground. Probably good for stomping to the beat, I thought.

I'll just say this: I think I did a decent job of selling it. I had a dang good time getting up there and being the weirdest guy in the room. I stomped and growled and missed notes and the slide went "tock" on the neck of the guitar, and the whole thing was the most fun I've had in ages. We got good video, and I did well enough that I'm going to put those up soon. I got a lot of questions after it was over; nobody there had ever seen one of these instruments before.

I'm going back next week. I'm working on a batch of new tunes. Heck, maybe I'll get to host one of these days. At any rate, I seemed to get noticed a little. The first thing I did on stage was hold up the CBG and say, "Three strings is what you get when you go down to the crossroads at midnight to make a deal, but you've only got half a soul to begin with.

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Sidenote: I gotta Facebook music page now. I'll be posting videos and the links for free song downloads there: http://www.facebook.com/pages/Uncle-Gus/364480300286719