by Anna Weaver | Sep 7, 2024 | All Posts, tips for open mic hosts, tips for open mic performers
If you’ve ever been to a slam, odds are that at least once someone stepped up to the mic and quietly said, So, this is some new shit. At which point the whole room shouted, NEW SHIT! And odds are, the energy shift was memorable. I don’t know how far back that...
by Anna Weaver | Jul 22, 2024 | tips for open mic hosts, tips for open mic performers
Fair warning: I am an unapologetically ardent fan of Elizabeth Gilbert. Not just her gorgeous novels and Gen-X-feminist-zeitgeist memoirs, from which I’ve reaped multiple come-to-goddess wake-up calls. Not just her masterful prose, to which I will die aspiring. More...
by Anna Weaver | May 25, 2024 | tips for open mic hosts
This is the second in a series of posts that recommend inspiring and practical books to help hosts and organizers create the show their communities need. Previous posts cover Big Magic by Elizabeth Gilbert and Jenny Odell’s How to Do Nothing. ...
by Anna Weaver | Nov 26, 2023 | tips for open mic hosts, tips for open mic performers
Somehow, since the invention of the modern open mic (whenever that was), the known universe has produced exactly one book titled How to Run an Open Mic. Published in 2017 by one Mr. John Locke and available only on a megalithic capitalist website to which I refuse, on...
by Anna Weaver | Mar 31, 2023 | All Posts, tips for open mic hosts
Every open mic host has her gifts. Mine include a cheerleader’s spirit, a voice that can reach the back of any average-sized room without a mic, and a ready and rowdy laugh. The weaknesses that ride shotgun? That same loud voice when amplified (sorry, front-row...
by Anna Weaver | Jan 1, 2023 | tips for open mic hosts
So I hit this open mic in Rhode Island at a live music venue called The Parlour. It was terrific in so many ways — space, structure, talent, vibe. That night, I met one of their regulars: a guitar player who also happened to be the most enthusiastic attendee I’ve met...
