Amateur rockers, singer/songwriters and bizarre performance artists rock open-mic nights across the Baton Rouge area. The Roux House hosts an open-mic night Mondays while Mellow Mushroom and Northgate Tavern host theirs Tuesdays. Open-mic nights are events that showcase local artists, performers and anyone brave enough to step on the stage. An open-mic night at Mellow Mushroom Jan. 29 provided insight into the trend. Mellow Mushroom is making its nightly change from restaurant to bar. Brian Paulich, an international studies junior, leads other employees in dragging in the giant PA towers and platforms that will make up the stage. Paulich is setting the stage for open mic night. He has watched it at Mellow Mushroom for seven years. Open-mic night performer Collin Cleary recalls how he felt in his first encounter with the open-mic stage. “Even though I had my buddy with me, I was still very nervous,” he said Mellow Mushroom employee and open mic night-performer Jeff Stein felt the same way. “Of course I was nervous,” he said. “Everyone’s nervous the first time.” Stein, like many open-mic night artists, sings and plays acoustic guitar. “The majority play acoustic guitar and sing cover songs,” said Kyle Wilkinson, the manager of the Mellow Mushroom. “However, we do have some keyboard players and the occasional rap act.” Cleary’s band is up first. He sings covers accompanied by a keyboard player while a friend adds bongos for percussion. Covers make up their repertoire, but it’s their unusual choices for covers that make them entertaining. The songs border somewhere between nostalgic and ironic. They open up with the theme song from the TV show “Growing Pains.” “As long as we keep on giving, we can take anything that comes our way,” Cleary sings. Memories of a mulleted Kirk Cameron wash through the audience. They follow it up with the theme songs from the Disney Channel cartoon “DuckTales” and the show “Cheers.” The band ends their set with the Aladdin song “A Whole New World,” obviously the girls’ favorite. Up next is John Brannan, a long-haired open-mic night veteran who has toured around Louisiana. Brannan, a University alumnus, has his acoustic guitar decorated with a picture of former chancellor Sean O’Keefe and the words “SAVE THE ‘STACHE.” Mellow has one of the most popular open-mic nights in the area, which can be both good and bad for performers. “Because they get a lot of people coming out to this one, they usually want to hear songs they know a little more,” Brannan said. “Playing your own original music is easier at the other ones simply because there’s not a lot of people. With big crowds … people tend to want to hear music they already know.” Brannan breaks out in a ragged version of the Beatles’ “Come Together.” Many in the crowd join in for the chorus, showing the way a cover of a popular song has a way of making everyone come together. Open-mic nights are open to all kinds of performers, and that makes it open to some bizarre incidents. “We’ve had everything from people playing in their boxers, to people dancing on stage and breaking the stage,” Paulich said. “We’ve had all kind of acts from hip-hop to reggae to people who really don’t even sing and just scream in to the microphone.” He also mentions instances of hula dancers and poets on the stage. “We’ve had all kinds of stuff with different degrees of success,” he said. Stein recalls one bizarre performance of an interpretive poet. “He would start screaming real loud, and he would be down on the floor rambling on aimlessly,” he said. “I give him credit because he was crazy enough to do it in front of people, but it was … freaking weird.” When Jill Gautreaux, a friend of Cleary’s, was asked about the most bizarre open mic night experience she encountered, she answered “hopefully tonight” with a giggle. “Hopefully Collin will be bizarre and fun,” she said. To see a full list of open-mic nights in the area, visit www.batonrougeopenmic.com.
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