There are many reasons last night’s show could have been a disaster. I had an inkling that there was something odd about it – as I was leaving the house I said to my spouse “I have never played a gig that I knew less about.” I was scheduled as an open mike feature, and given little detail. When I asked when booking the slot “how long does the feature play?” I was told “oh about 45 minutes to an hour,” which seemed like an odd length for an open mike scheduled for only two hours. And when I arrived I discovered that the venue was literally a hallway – long and thin (if it was five feet wide I’d be surprised), with no sound reinforcement and no chairs. The person in charge didn’t seem to have much experience with open mikes and said he’d been trying to get one going and it hadn’t really worked yet, so he thought maybe he should book featured acts and that might draw some more players. I was not optimistic. But it turned out to be one of my favorite nights of music in recent memory. The place is a tiny little art gallery, with fascinating contemporary art on the walls – exactly the kind of art I like. It’s right in the center of Jamaica Plain, an artsy and socially conscious area, and the gallery owner is trying to get the community to visit the space, hence the idea for an open mike, even if it’s an extremely unusual space. There’s a well-developed open mike culture in the greater Boston area that I know well, and I’m accustomed to how these events work. This, instead, was an open mike conceived by someone who isn’t a part of that community, and the other participants weren’t in that community. Everything was different. It turned out the gallery owner had booked two featured acts, and other folks showed up to play, too. There wasn’t a clear way that things would proceed, no one was really running the event, and the open mikers also didn’t come in with specific expectations. It felt like we developed the norms as we went along, and what ultimately transpired was that each act (including the two features) ended up playing about 4 songs. The presentation wasn’t extremely polished. There was the Berklee student who hadn’t thought through what he would play, and needed to borrow a capo, but boy could he write and present songs. There was the banjo player who came out to see the other featured act and didn’t bring her banjo, so she had to borrow someone’s guitar and figure out how to play the songs as she went, but who had a voice like you couldn’t believe, and made the songs sound like they were meant for guitar. The other featured act (a duo) didn’t seem at all promising when they took the stage – the guy playing the standard acoustic guitar started out by trying to tune and invariably tuned the strings in the wrong direction (the audience eventually gave advice), saying “I’m not good at tuning.” But when they started playing, it was magic, two guitars (the second a steel guitar) perfectly intertwined in complex melodies that perfectly underpinned the traditional-sounding original songs. There was almost no one who played last night that I wouldn’t be happy to see in a full-length concert. And what was most amazing was how attentive everyone was. There were hardly more than a dozen people there the whole evening, but they were all there for the whole evening. We sat on the floor and listened to each other play. Everyone listened with complete focus. The acoustics were good, the vibe was relaxed. The other featured act brought beers, which they shared with everyone. I had a blast. It was fascinating to be in a music community (even if it was one assembled on the spot) so different from the one I generally hang out in, but equally – if not more – talented. And more respectful of each other’s talents or efforts, and focused on the music than, alas, I am used to in my music community. It was not what I expected or even what I was hoping for, and I’m grateful for that.