by Anna Weaver | Sep 30, 2024 | All Posts, tips for open mic performers, US open mics
One of my favorite metaphors for open mic is that it’s the Swiss Army knife of entertainment. If that’s true (it is), then the open mic I found in Livonia, MI, is the super deluxe version — fully tricked out with gizmos and features that make playing out just a little...
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 | 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 | Jun 30, 2023 | All Posts, tips for open mic performers, US open mics
A while back I compiled some advice for aspiring hosts and organizers about how to name an open mic show. (Granted, it’s a rarefied problem, but if you ever need help, I gotchu.) Anyway, the post lists a handful of shows with cool names, including one that was still...
by Anna Weaver | Dec 2, 2022 | All Posts, tips for open mic performers
If you ask most people, tourism means sightseeing. Pick a city or a country and go see—and eat—whatever it’s known for. Plan a road trip. Take a cruise. Book a tour. Walk around a lot. See things. Take pictures. Learn a little history. Maybe get a stamp on your...
