Issue 53 / March 2015

24
Bido Lito! March 2015
“perseverance
ten to fifteen years ago. People will play a good
Open Mic – even if the
connotations of that are ‘Oh, it’s an Open Mic’ –
rather than play a crap gig. A good Open Mic scene
helps people avoid doing rubbish gigs.”
The Bridewell, off Duke Street, has held an Open
Mic night since November 2013, run by Iain Morley and Ben
Singleton of The Buffalo Riot. “We didn’t realise there was
that much of a scene out there, that people wanted it,”
Iain explains. “Edgar Jones came down when we started
to help kick it off. What we found was there were a lot of
people booking acts, which isn’t really an Open Mic. We try
and make it so that people know where you are; a constant
every week to try and build up a community. Perseverance
is the key,” the singer states. “People might go to an Open
Mic night and realise it’s not for them; it’s all relative. It has
to exist as a conduit for people playing acoustic music to get
feedback, or even for someone to do it and say ‘this isn’t for
me’. In between shows you’ll get singers from bands coming
to Open Mics, and we’re even getting people from the first
year of LIPA coming to perform. What we understood when
we started doing it was that there’s already a community
of people doing the Open Mics, and the more people the
better.”
At the other end of the city centre, the Monday Club has
been a fixture of The Cavern Pub’s programme since 2011.
“The Cavern came to me almost four years ago and asked
if I wanted to do an Open Mic in the Cavern Pub and gave
me a six-week slot,” organiser and host Ian Prowse recalls.
Observing a strict ‘no covers’ policy – “I don’t wanna hear
covers of Wonderwall or Sex On Fire ever again,” Ian
grimaces – the emphasis on musicians’ own material steers
the event away from being a tribute to the band who once
played at the street’s most famous address opposite, and
has become a key platform for nurturing emerging new
talent. Millie Courtney, the Liverpool teenager who enjoyed
a meteoric rise to top the country charts in Nashville
last year, cut her teeth at the Monday Club. And the
bidolito.co.uk
“the internet has given a lot
more confidence to the bedroom
musician and has made it more
likely for them to emerge from the
house. I think SoundCloud culture
and open Mics are natural allies.”
thom morecroft
is the
key”
comparison with New York also recurs: “We’ve had loads of
people come over who’ve done the Open Mic scene in New
York and said it was a similar thing,” Ian notes.
Elsewhere, The Magnet is the newest arrival on the circuit,
establishing an Open Mic night alongside evergreen citybased
promoters Mellowtone. Hosted by Dave O’Grady
– alongside a rotating gabble of storied musicians – the
setup is so new the night is still only a few weeks old. “Dave
McTague at Mellowtone got me down to play at the first one
with a view of hosting it maybe once a month, but it turned
out well [and is now weekly],” Dave O’Grady explains of the
venture. Hosted “upstairs” (i.e. the street level bar of the
venue) on Wednesdays from 8pm, Dave thinks that “Open
Mics are the only avenue for young singer-songwriters to get
in to the scene. No-one’s gonna come and book their first
iain morley
headline gig for them before they’ve got their shit together.”
Nipping around the corner from Hardman Street onto
Hope Street, you find the Bistro of the venerated Everyman
Theatre, location for A Lovely Word, an Open Mic night that
caters exclusively for spoken word and poetry. Taking place
on every second Monday of the month and run by Bido
Lito! contributor Paddy Hughes, the night continues the
lineage of the Liverpool Poets (Henri, McGough, Patten et
al), whose 1967 anthology The Mersey Sound became one
of the bestselling poetry collections ever released. “I think
diversity of Open Mic nights is crucial; they give people the
chance to put themselves outside of their comfort zones
and express themselves in front of a crowd,” Paddy states.
“Everyone has different ways of expressing themselves, be it
through singing or be it through spoken word.”
With “verse, sonnets, spoken word, rap and beat poetry,”
all represented on a typical night’s line-up, Paddy thinks that
the aim of any Open Mic night “shouldn’t be a platform for
the host to show how great he is, instead it should be a safe
plinth for experienced and inexperienced artists to thrive
and grow. It is vital to learn from others in order to progress
as an artist. Liverpool is a hub of creative talent so it would
be crazy not to tap into it.”
Bido Lito! will be out and about across Liverpool’s
Open Mic scene this month. Keep up to date by following
@BidoLito and share your Open Mic experiences with
#OpenMicLiverpool.