Just a note to say we ARE watching the weather for tomorrow’s open mic in Takoma Park with featured artist Justin Golden. We’ll make our decisions about whether (no pun intended) to go forward with the night by 3pm day-of. Thanks for your patience – and stay warm and safe!
Tuesday night open mics at Takoma Spark.
School of Musical Traditions | 7112 Willow Ave., Takoma Park, MD 20912 | signup at 6.30pm, music at 7pm
Sponsored in conjunction with Institute of Musical Traditions AT School of Musical Traditions, down the street from HOUSE of Musical Traditions, this is a rare thing : a small LISTENING ROOM open mic. The evening is free, but every night we have a featured artist and we hope that you can support them by tipping or purchasing merch!
Tonight w featured artist Justin Golden! It’s not many artists who learn to play the blues in a dream, but for Golden, the music had been percolating in his subconscious for years before he started playing. Sleeping late at Bonnaroo some years back, he woke up from a dream with a blues fingerpicking pattern in his head, a seminal moment that sparked a lifelong commitment to the music. “Blues was always what I wanted to play,” he says. “It was an idea before I knew how practical it was or what it meant.” Later he played this dreamt fingerpicking pattern to blues elder Phil Wiggins who told him that he’d been unconsciously playing Piedmont blues, the tradition from his home region of Virginia. This musical kismet showed him that he was on the right path with the music, and the encouragement of Wiggins and other elders pushed him to learn more. His passion as a torch bearer and relationship with Wiggins connected him with the Virginia Folklife Program at Virginia Humanities who helped him release the new album. Now he’s passing that inspiration on, teaching youth to play as well. Trained as an archaeologist, Golden learned to take a long view of history. He studied historic cemetery sites throughout the region and noted that old burial grounds could be lost within a generation. One generation clearing land would remember the site of an old cemetery and leave up the trees to mark it, but the next generation would forget and clear the land, losing the historic memory of that graveyard. “It’s the same thing in the music,” he says, “if there’s no link to an elder, the music can be lost.”
This is NOT a restaurant so bring your own food or drink if you want to eat or drink! We have a house keyboard, but it’s a small space, unable to support acts larger than a quartet, and no drumkits. 2 songs, 10 minutes, 1 pun – whichever’s shorter. We webcast Live on Facebook.com/robsopenmics, YouTube.com/robsopenmics and Twitch.tv/ilyaimy