Issue 53 / March 2015
March 2015 issue of Bido Lito! Featuring HOOTON TENNIS CLUB, A LOVELY WAR, MOTHERS, TUNE-YARDS, OPEN MIC CULTURE and much more. March 2015 issue of Bido Lito! Featuring HOOTON TENNIS CLUB, A LOVELY WAR, MOTHERS, TUNE-YARDS, OPEN MIC CULTURE and much more.
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.
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- Page 1: FREE Issue 53 March 2015 Hooton Ten
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- Page 11 and 12: THE MAGNET KAZIMIER KAZIMIER KAZIMI
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