O’Neils Every Tuesday @ 8:30: After the New Albuquerque Open Mic at O’Neils…

• Posted by Carson on January 16th, 2008 filed in General, Music, Shows, Open mic

So Dean Maier, David Peters, and I were remarking on the oddities of the Albuquerque singer-songwriter community. I’m a veteran of the recently deceased Blue Dragon. I started playing there in January of 2003. Yet tonight, I heard so many people at the open mic whom I have never heard before. Frist of all, thanks to E. Christina Herr and Martin for hosting the open mic tonight. The sign up begins at 8:30; performances at 9. Acts play in the order that they sign up. Given all the performers and the general engagedness of the crowd, I would call it a successful beginning. Christina and Martin seemed to know a number of tonights performers. These two formerly hosted an open mic at Southwest Gift Baskets.

I had never seen most of the performing crowd tonight-there were about 20 different acts-at the Blue Dragon* or at the new open mic at Winning’s. This latter open mic is hosted by Steven Nery on Thursday nights at Winning’s. Sign-up is at 6:45 and the music starts at 7. Steven draws names blind from a hat. He always draws one in advance so you aren’t totally on the spot when he calls your name out.

Is there a reason these two crowds remain so distinctly unintegrated? We couldn’t have handled many more performers tonight as the music went to 11:45. Yet the gap in the community seems unnecessary.
*When the Blue Dragon closed last summer (2007), Steven Nery had assumed open mic hosting duties. Steven took over from Matt (last name?) who took over from Permanent Records very own Adam Hooks/Adam Hoox. Norm Everett passed the show onto Adam. Prior to Norm, Michael Whitten hosted at the Dragon.