As I wrote in my newsletter two Sundays ago, I’ve been playing outdoors here in France. I omitted one purely practical reason for doing so: we’re living in a suburban town out at the end of a RER train line (not Metro) and the last train from central Paris is around 9:30pm. So much for going out at night, including all the great open mic nights I had searched up around the city. If I wanted to play anywhere other than our apartment, outdoors it was, and during the day.

When we were first here there was RER maintenance going on for a couple weeks, so sometimes there wouldn’t be *any* train service on weekends and evenings, or there would be bus service adding at least an extra hour on the way home. Pretty brutal.

When you add the fact that the door-to-door journey itself is already an hour and a half each way, frankly we weren’t even going into Paris too often.

Then just over a week ago, everything changed.

On the way home from Paris one night I was pretty late for the last train and had already resigned myself to a pricey Uber. I decided to check the trains just in case and…

BOOM - late trains running! I’m still confused. New schedule since the repairs? Were they always there and I had it wrong?

In any case, since then I’ve been hitting the Paris open mic scene with a vengeance. This past week I did three nights in a row and might try for four next week.

You could play a different one every night and most nights there are multiple options. The level of musicians can be pretty high, but you get the whole gamut like open mics anywhere. Although I’ve seen a few people who clearly didn’t even know their songs, that was sort of strange. Maybe they were imploding with nerves, I saw that a couple times. One girl kept getting flustered, stopping, and fussing, ‘YOU DON’T UNDERSTAND, I’M TRYING REALLY HARD!’. A young guy completely botched his cover of Blackbird but came back super strong for his second song, he had good chops.

He told me after, “I don’t know why I do that… I need to learn to get comfortable right away”. Right there with ya.

For starters, I had an offer to play an open mic on a canal barge in the Stalingrad area, at an occasional series called Sawmill Sessions at Peniche Anako. Great space, great sound, great audience, just quality all around. The limited open mic roster meant business, really top-notch (followed by a group jam, which is a common thing here). The featured performer who invited me was Cory Seznec - who is not only an incredible musician, singer, and performer with a strong following here, but by chance is moving to Takoma Park with his family shortly, so keep your eyes peeled for any shows.

Cory’s set was jam-packed (granted it was his sendoff show for his peeps). It got even more crowded after I took the shot below on the right, standing room only in the back. Amazingly it didn’t thin out too much for the open mic segment afterward.

I was up last (I think it was 8th). For the gearheads out there, I really enjoyed the Ear Trumpet stage mic, one of those you stand a bit back from, old-timey style. It was startling in its warmth and clarity. Cory got my second of two songs, a soft, restrained version of Love Again from my Mars album (the intro got clipped).

You know I hate these videos, I find them diminishing, but I’m trying to get over it.

Next up was the Paris Songwriters Club, hosted by an Irish expat downstairs at the Cave Cafe in Montmartre. I didn’t get any photos, sorry, but again it was a packed lineup and a full and diverse room. I’m hard on myself but I was happy to play pretty well, solid energy, and get a good response to the songs. I’ll be going back.

I talked my daughter into coming with me the next night to the Highlander, a Scottish (duh) pub right off Pont Neuf. Another medieval basement space.

As I mentioned recently, I’ve been practicing an alternative set, reviving long-dormant originals by me and my mod-entourage from the old DC scene and reworking the songs for solo acoustic. The Highlander open mic would be the first time I would roll out a couple of them in front of people.

While they’re from such a different era and we were practically kids when we wrote them on our Rickenbacker guitars, I can’t help but think their blend of youthful hope and a certain grandiosity might make them the right kind of anthems for our current moment. What’s the expression, if something is out of fashion long enough it comes back?

My Own Interests (by The Generation)

In a distant land,

Where the borders reach into the sky,

I can take a stand,

With no fear, no need to question why.

I can make a plan,

A new design that needs no reason.

You can understand

Why the harvest comes in every season.

My own interests lie

In a place where no one bothers me

My own interests lie

In a place that only I can see

No light ahead

Just empty space where birds are riding

Full speed ahead

Only I can tell where the truth is hiding

Don't take my hand

If you know what's good

From what someone told you

No one understands

That a paradise is waiting for you

I got my daughter to record video and she did a great job. I flubbed a few lyrics, like swapping ‘stand’ and ‘plan’ in the intro verse. Yeah, still learning them, and the stage sound was pretty challenging so tbh this time I was in survival mode. But that’s part of why I do these, learning to survive anything.

Afterward I was down about it at first, it had sounded so terrible to me and felt like such a struggle. How it sounds out in the room is often very different though, so the video was actually reassuring. Part of the deal is how you cover any problems, so in that sense it was a win.

I usually make little notes for myself. “Overall not bad. Next time looser, more energy.”

Lastly, Thursday night was Tennessee Jazz, not far from Highlander. I was 12th on the list, out of around 20.

I don’t have pics or video of myself but here’s the scene:

When you talk about culture in Paris, this is one of the lesser-appreciated manifestations. People turn out for even the humblest - but surprisingly rewarding - of music events: the open mic.

Notebook