I am bringing this up again for an update - I've made it back to this open mike (they actually call it a ceilidh, but people call everything a ceilidh in CB) few times.

The next time I went, I didn't bring my guitar and didn't plan on singing anything - I wanted to just listen and learn for a while to get a better feel for how to play there.

Several people, seeing me without a guitar, spontaneously offered me the use of theirs, so this made me feel even happier about the friendliness of the crowd. The plays-along-with-everybody guy was among those who offered to lend a guitar; I also learned, incidentally, that his name is Cliff Carter and that he's deaf in one ear.

Before the show I talked to a couple of older women who had been there last time I went, and they said how much they loved my voice and wanted to know what I was singing. They were sorry to learn that I wasn't planning to sing at all, and begged me to do something "please... for them."

Well, I don't have an ego of stone... so I said I would sing after all.

So when my turn came up I sang Caledonia and Cripple Creek accompanied by the house band (I didn't want to borrow a guitar since I wasn't yet used to a steel-string's fingerboard). And I thought it went quite badly. I knew what keys I liked to play the songs in, but when I asked the guys to give me an opening chord I found it difficult to find my note in it. As the songs progressed I felt ill at ease, not knowing how long to pause between verses or how long to give for an instrumental break, and not knowing how to communicate with the players about when I should come in or how long I expected them to give me a break for.

So when I sat down I was thinking "No more jamming in front of a microphone!" I like playing with others, but I wouldn't want to perform with others when we haven't planned out a strategy verbally beforehand and we're all facing the audience so it's hard to make eye contact.

Then I noticed that the other ordinary performers didn't seem to having a problem with the setup. And I concluded that the others probably weren't worrying about stuff I was worrying about - they were just plunging in how they wanted to do it and trusting the accompanists to find the key, to fill in pauses in the singing, and to go back to the verse when the singer starts the verse again. It was all about faith.

So the next time I went I had it all figured out, and it went great. I told both the accompanists and the sound guy beforehand that I would do the first song with them and the second song alone, and that for the second song I wanted my voice and my guitar miked separately.

The first song I just strummed the basic chords, and I essentially ignored the others - I just played the song and let them fend for themselves. It worked fine. And it was in the second song that I fingerpicked and did a solo.

I think I've hit on the right approach - one song their way, one song my way.

Jim Dixon, tell us about this reserved seating business - it sounds like it might be humourous.

Marion