June 17, 2008 - The Moaning Pipe Open Mic

The Moaning Pipe Open Mic Night is held by the Towson Arts Collective in Towson, MD on the third Tuesday of every month. The venue was a basement next door to a bar. The floors were concrete and the walls were unexpectedly sterile, merely a few scattered pictures warming them. The open mic itself was held in a back room. There were exactly a half-dozen people there when Mom and I arrived just after 7 to find no more than a half-dozen people and many empty chairs.

I struck up conversation with a pair of individuals on the far end of the room. Lisa said she’d been to the Moaning pipe once before, brought by a few friends of hers. She was a guitarist and song-writer, and she was trying to muster the courage to add her name to the sign-up sheet (which called the event a “cabaret”). Chris was also a singer and guitar-player, but he was more certain of himself. He later left to get his own guitar, thereby guaranteeing himself that he’d play.

Lisa said that, in May, there’d been about 30 people drifting in and out of the open mic. He words proved portentous, and, as eight o’clock neared, the room began to fill up. A girl with the curly hair took the stage, welcoming everyone with a short story she’d written about moving to Baltimore. It was stylistic and enjoyable, describing the move in disjoined steps. It might have seemed especially relevant to me since I’d just moved into the apartment above Sweet Things, or perhaps because my parents have a similar fear of me going to the city on my own.

It turns out that it was the curly-haired girl’s birthday, and the next performer, who was bare-foot, hatted, and oddly hobbit-like, brought out his banjo and had a birthday sing along for her and one of the other collective members. This was followed by Micheline, a middle-aged woman from California with, according to my Mom, “an opinion on everything. My Mom had been talking with her for most of the time since we’d arrived, and I laughed to see my Mom glancing over at me when she started reading her passage about women and cussing. While an interesting topic – the societal restrictions upon the language used by the female sex – her excerpt was far from impressive. I suspect that her book, Everybody Lies About Their Sex Lives, is self-published.

She was followed by a guitarist who sang two vocals, and this set the tone for the night. All told, there were seven different musical groups. However, each had its own flavor. For instance, one was a string trio with a very whimsical, children’s-special feel about them. Another was a Blues-Brothers-esque duo that played with a guitar and a washerboard. Chris’ guitar was rigged to the max with a large metal disk in the middle and many buttons of indeterminate function. I also ended up speaking with a fellow named Dan, the friend who’d brought Lisa last time, who played barefoot and accompanied by a lanky, morose fellow.

The worst performance of the night, by far, was the stand-up comedian. Fall-over drunk off of his “lemonade,” he became so hung up on child porn and Miley Ray Cyrus that he forgot the rest of his routine. The curly-haired girl pulled him from the stage as soon as she possibly could, giving him a full five minutes to embarrass himself in ways he will probably never remember.

Two people actually read poetry. One, Cliff, looked like Bob Ross. He immediately started reading his first piece, but he introduced each of the following. He read directly from the page and made some, but minimal, eye-contact. He wrote a poem about Vega, the rain that doesn’t fall, which discussed possibilities never realized. He wrote about a girl who writes poems on the inside of cereal boxes, and he wrote about a guy going blind from glaucoma. He also had a super-hero poem, 1/16 Man, the Lowest Common Denominator, that was hilarious and especially notable because he had the string trio accompany him with music – guitar and violin - and voice.

The other reader was Dave, the hatted fellow from the Blues Brothers duo. He had a wonderful, confident stage manner, making jokes as he performed. His first piece, The King of Flames was an ironic commentary on the Salem Witch Trials (“Why burn something you think came from hell?”), and his second piece was about his inheritance and ancestors. Comical and enjoyable, they were a good way to end the night. However, since there was a little more time, the String Trio and the Banjo Hobbit had a reprise.

All in all, the group was friendly and supportive. I think that this was a good outlet for these individuals to express themselves, to affirm their desire to produce and create art. I was especially intrigued by the fundamental role that music played for so many of them in constructing their verses. It was also interesting to note the different approaches taken to creation.

Lisa says that her songs had to come all at once, while she was in the height of emotion. Chris said that he’d return to a piece and revise. Sometimes he’d get a whole song in a sitting, more often, it was slow going. Dan said that he’d been playing since he was a small child, and that his style’d evolved over the course of the play, following the paths that he likes.

I don’t know if I’ll be able to make it back, but, if I do, I’ll definitely read a piece, perhaps an original piece.