For the Love of Mic: New Venue at New Santee Coffeehouse

Hi Everybody,

New venue secured! 

Good news folks; we have , one that will be opening either at the end of August or the beginning of September.  It will be the Kaffee Meister and this will be their second location—their first is in Lakeside, a kiosk, so to speak, in the Red Barn’s antique mall. 

The owners will be Leslie and Mike Emmons; their daughter Alicia will be managing the new location with her husband Chester.  They dropped by our open mic this week so we could get acquainted—you’ll like them. 

Where is it going to be, you ask?  In Santee at, none other than the former location of the .  The space has been sub-divided but they will still have about two-thirds of the original space; it should be plenty of room.  We hope. (Santee Patch will report on the opening of Kaffee Meister soon). 

We had an interim open mic at our house in Spring Valley and about twenty-five of us were in attendance; a decent-sized crowd.

6:30 – Tim Woods –As it was being held at my home, Greg felt that I should be the host, so I obliged.  I did a set of tunes that hadn‘t been fully committed to memory, so with a little help from my music book I played Roy Orbison’s “Crying”; Kate Wolf’s “Give Yourself to Love”; Gus Kahn & Walter Donaldson’s 1928 tune “Makin’ Whoopie”; Dave Guard’s “Scotch and Soda”; and Steve Goodman’s “City of New Orleans”.

6:45 – Gregory Gross – Greg did a very nice version of The Doobie Brothers’ “Toulouse Street”; Mark McGinn’s “The Centipede Song”; Stan Rogers’ “White Squall”; and Johnny Rivers’ “Secret Agent Man”; and Jim Croce’s “Don’t Mess Around with Jim”.

7:00 – The Bobs x 3 (Bob Arsenault, Bob Cool & Bob Setzer) – The bluegrass guys did “Soldiers Joy”; Hank Williams Jr’s “Howling at the Moon”; Jay Unger’s “Ashokan Farewell”; and Porter Wagoner’s “Before I Met You”.

7:15 – Ken Morrell – Ken had a set of Julie Miller’s “All My Tears”; Super Tramp’s “Even in the Quietest Moments”; HEM’s “Nights Like a River”; and Bruce Cockburn’s “The Poet”.

7:30 – Lynda Sterns & James Brown– Another fortunate pairing of performers from our open mic; two fine voices coming together to give us some tunes.  They gave us Ian Tyson’s “Someday Soon”; Carol King’s “Will You Still Love Me Tomorrow?”; and the Beatles’ “This Boy”.

7:45 – Bob Wilson – Bob’s songs came from his favorite era; the early twentieth-century.  He played Jimmy Kennedy’s “Istanbul”; “Here Comes Fatima”; “When Yuba Plays the Rumba on the Tuba Down in Cuba”.

8:00 – Pauline Jiminez – It’s been quite a while since we’ve heard Pauline; I had forgotten what a beautiful voice she has.  She treated us to Ken Curtis’s “Song of Wyoming”; Dave Stamey’s “Cowboy Moon”, and “McGee Creek”; and Bill Staines’ “Sueno”.

8:15 –Les Armstrong and Greg Gross – The rest of the cowboys were absent, so Greg backed Les’s lead guitar playing; they did Waylon Jennings’ “Good Hearted Woman”; Buck Owens’ “Truck Driving Woman”; Eddy Arnold’s “Make the World Go Away”; Merle Haggard’s “Ramblin’ Fever”; and Johnny Cash’s “Folsom Prison Blues”.

8:30 – Ray Owens (O’Dell)– We’ve always known Ray as Ray Owens, but that was a misunderstanding he never bothered to correct; he brought me a complimentary copy of his new CD with his correct name—the jig was up.  He did Neil Young’s “Like a Hurricane”, and “Comes a Time”; then a couple of his originals “Full Circle”; and “Native White”. 

8:45 – Tim (and Marge) Woods & Nita Homan – The plan was that Nita and I were going to play a few tunes, but she wanted Marge and I to sing Neil and Leandra’s “Old Love”; I was able to convince Marge to do it with me—a rarity—after that Marge wanted me to sing my new song “Two-week Party Animal”, so I complied.  Then Nita and I did The Everly Brothers’ “All I Have to Do is Dream”; the traditional “Stewball”; and Hank Williams “Your Cheatin’ Heart”.

9:15 – Bob Setzer – Bob had felt a little rough earlier in the evening, but managed to feel well enough to play a few tunes for us.  He closed our evening with John Denver’s “Country Roads”; his own “Shut the Whole World Out”; and Johnny Cash’s “A Boy Named Sue”.

It had been a gorgeous night with a full moon rising over the mountain, a nice audience, and an opportunity to meet our new perspective hosts.  Not a bad evening altogether.

Tim Woods, Greg Gross, and the Wood ‘n’ Lips open mic crew