An Evening at a Davis Open Mic Night

I stopped by the yesterday for an open mic night that takes place in Davis on Wednesdays. It was a great time. Here’s why I went:

Before I moved (back) to Davis this summer, I lived in San Francisco for a year, and in Chicago for a year before that. While living in SF, I performed live music once or twice a month at small coffee shops and bars. I had grown up playing guitar, but had tailed off in recent years. This was my way forcing myself to get back to playing daily.

I also played songs in the Montgomery BART station after work once a week, with the promise that I’d put the spare change toward my student loans. It was really just a clever way to get myself to play music consistently, though. And it worked well. I usually made between $2 and $20 in about an hour.

I hadn’t played much music since moving back to Davis, so when my Twitter pal @mbenti posted that an open mic would take place at Barista Brew, I set aside some time and decided to make the trip.

My past experience with open mics had been purely musical, with nothing but singer-songwriters lined up to play. This, I learned quickly, was something different. The Wednesday night open mic in Davis is really just a creative space to express yourself in any way you want. The foundation is poetry, which is inherently limitless. 

I had left my guitar in the car upon arrival so that I could just relax and observe if I didn’t feel like playing anything.

Quickly though, I sank comfortably into the structure of the gathering, which was loose. It went from poetry to spoken word to cello to guitar and back to poetry again. Some people sat and read their creations quietly from laptops or iPhones while others stood and belted memorized words or read from a notebook.

It was great -- casual fun. After a few people did their thing, I went out and grabbed my guitar from the car. I came back in and played two quick songs, one of which was only half-written. I could tell by the vibe of the room, though, that it didn’t matter. It was a place to experiment and share. It went well, and it felt good to bang out some music. 

And for that reason, I’ll definitely be back again, probably next week. You should consider doing the same.

Like Davis Patch on Facebook for open mic updates. 

Note that the location changes regularly. It's often held casually at one performer's garage. Some recent sessions have been held at the site in . Here are some relevant links: 

SickSpits Poetry Collective - UC Davis-based collective of spoken-word artists.