Carino's : Open-Mic

Thanks to Brody Young for bringing this event to my attention.

Paul Morris and myself were looking for events to further our cello/percussion duo and this looked like a great place to test our skills, a focus point. I signed up for the open-mic as soon as I received the invitation from Brody.

Initially I was told we would have twenty minutes to fill, so Paul and I settled down and had one rehearsal and worked up seven songs, twenty minutes on the button. A few days before the events I was informed that places were filling up quickly and we'd been whittled down to two songs. That's quite a change, but that gave us more songs to choose from.

I had somehow formed the opinion that by recieving phone calls from Carino's that we would magically appear on their whiteboard. No, we still had to walk up and write our names on the white board. I knelt down on the floor, picked up the blue marker and wrote our names up and put the cap back on the pen. I pushed myself up from the floor on a guitar case and it was at this point that a man standing next to me told me I had marker fluid on my hands. Too true, the pen was leaking! OH NO! I had put blue marks all over his guitar case and a little on a jacket. I washed my hands and luckily the marker fluid was water soluble and it washed off. I scrunched up up some paper towling, wet it a bit and we cleaned up the guitar case. The owner of the jacket, a lady, was cleaning the jacket herself and gave me dagger eyes as I walked past. Nothing like making a lasting impression. :)

We were the second act on. We set up, had a tiny sound check and then did our stuff. We were both happy at our efforts and the quality of the sound. We made our way to our seats at the back and put our stuff away and then found our chairs to sit down. A few seconds later the manager of Carinos walks up to me and said he would definitely book us for a gig. Wow! Beyond our wildest extectations.

We now have a new focus point: Working up three hours worth of songs and fairly quickly. We decided on the stage name of John Paul to work under.

I can see I will have to use more than just the cello, so I'm thinking slide resonator and guitar (not sure which one just yet) would be required for a longer gig. Paul's thinking of using his electronic drum kit to give him more sound variety. Beyond my wildest dreams and a lot of fun to be had for both of us.