open mike,
       We sign up a bit differently from most open mic's. Most of them have a sign up sheet with about ten to fifteen slots on it, This causes a lot of jockeying for position and people leaving until thier slots come up and leaving after thier done. The founder of our open mic, Ira McDonald, came up with a unique solution to the problem. each performer writes his or her name on a slip of paper. Those are then put into a hat and drawn more or less randomly (I'll explain the "more or less" in a moment). Since nobody knows exactly when they'll be up they tend to stay, at least, until thier slot is over. That gives everyone a larger audience to work with. Most have gotten into the habit of staying through to the end. They've figured out that the rest of us are having a good time. This system also gives us a bit of flexibility. If someone really does have a good reason to get in and out quickly we can help them out without getting anyone's nose out of joint.

    Everyone get three songs or fifteen minutes, whichever comes first. This gives everyone an equal shot. The three songs gives everyone a chance to stretch out a bit. The time limit prevents someone from trying to do "American Pie", "The Wreck of the Edmund Fitzgerald", and all 124 verses of "Tam Lin" in a row (Don't laugh. years ago I saw someone actually try to do that and then, when taken to task for it, gripe that he only did "three songs"). The other rotating hosts and I hold ourselves to this rule as well.

      One other little habit that we've gotten into is thanking the performers ( collectively from the stage and individually face to face) for coming in to share thier music or poetry or whatever with us and encouraging them to, please, return.

    We don't charge a cover. Each of the hosts is a volunteer. The only time any of us make any money off of this is if one of us manages to sell a CD. I can't speak for the motivations of the other hosts ( Aaron Nathans, Julia McConahay, Ron Dennis, and the new kid, Nancy Rost), but I do it as a way of giving back what I've been given (for details see the"Who Are Your Influences" thread). It is also a great joy to watch performers grow and develope. The previously mentioned "new kid", Nancy Rost started coming in when we first moved to Urban Market ( our previous venue had been sold out from under us). She lived accross the street. It took Ingrid and I about a month to convince her to bring in her keyboard and to sing for us. She plunked along haltingly and mumbled her songs in the general direction of the mic. Now, two years later, she's grown into a fine performer, keyboardist, songwriter, recording artist, and, in January, will join us as one of our rotating hosts. We're very proud of her.

       In our last two venues we've had time for only about ten performers or so. Both venues closed early. At Escape we'll be starting at 8:00pm and going until we run out of steam. They close at midnight.

Stephen Lee