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Arts & Entertainment

The Wood 'n' Lips Open Mic Newsletter

Once a week local musicians of all ages meet at Friendly Grounds Coffeehouse to play music and enjoy the night.

Hidey Ho Neighbor,

Thursday, 6 p.m.: The place is humming tonight; I’m seeing a lot of people we haven’t seen for ages—it’s going to be a good show. I probably won’t play; we’ll need all the time slots we can get. 

Sure enough we had a at the drawing time, late arrivals were out of luck.

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6:30 Greg Gross: Has some quirky tunes, like LeRoy Mack’s “A Praying Mantis Love Affair”; the not so quirky “What a Day For a Daydream” by John Sebastian; Johnny Rivers’ “Secret Agent Man”; and Weird Al Yenkovic’s “The Journey Begins” (Bye, Bye American Pie, Jedi style).

6:45 Sandy & Ralph Lowe: Our favorite married performers (to each other, that is) brought us a set of “Evening of Roses” (something new?); Consuelo Velasquez’s “Besame Mucho”; “President Garfield’s Hornpipe”; “Farewell to Whiskey”; and “Rakes of Kildaire”.

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7:00 Courtney & Chelsea were back to perform for us, Courtney having just graduated from high school.  The cousins started with Selena Gomez’ “Who Says?”; and continues on with Josh Groban’s “Tonight With You”; Adele’s “We Could Have Had it All”; and Sugarland’s “Stuck Like Glue”.

7:15: Coastal Eddy & the Unstable Cliffs (Bruce Barnes, Larry Joslin & Rick Tackett):: Bringing on a Bluegrass vibe, the trio did their take on extended versions of Louis Armstrong’s “Sweet Georgia Brown”; and the Beatles’ “And I Love Her”.  The Beatles and Bluegrass…who knew?

7:30 Ray Poe with Les Armstrong & Bruce Barnes: Shifted us into a Country Western mode with Freddy Fender’s “Wasted Day and Wasted Nights”; “Little Old Wine Drinker Me”, covered by Robert Mitchum & Dean Martin (duh!); Faron Young’s “Here I am in Dallas”; and Ray Prices “Heartaches by the Number”.

7:45:  Les Armstrong, with Ray & Bruce: Continued, with Les providing the vocals for: Charley Pride’s “So Afraid of Losing You”; Dwight Yoakam’s “Guitars, Cadillac’s and Hillbilly Music”; Johnny Rodrigues “Pass Me By”; Waylon Jennings’ “The Only Daddy that Walked the line”; and Jon Schneider’s “I’m Going to Leave You Tomorrow”.

8:00  Vernon Cheng: What the evening had been missing was Brazilian music, so that’s where Vernon went, ala Antonio Carlos Jobim’s “Chega de Sandade”; plus Carlos Santana & Rob Thomas’ “Smooth”; and Michael Jackson’s “The Man in the Mirror” (not even remotely Brazilian).

8:15 Tom Barbarie & John Movius (aka Broke Hat Mountain): The formula of Tom’s singing, with John’s electric guitar accompaniment was just right for Johnny Cash’s tunes: “Big River” and “The Home of the Blues”; then Hank Williams’ “Picture From Life’s Other Side”.

8:30 Big Al:  Felt we needed to hear some Neil Young material, so he gave us Neil’s  “Out on a Weekend”; Johnny Cash’s (and Nine Inch Nails’) “Hurt”; and Elton John’s “I Need You to Turn To”.  All good stuff.

8:45 Bill Lodin: Hadn’t been able to join us for a while, so it was good to have him back.  He did Bob Dylan’s “It Takes a Lot to Laugh and a Train to Cry”; the Grateful Dead’s “Cowboy Song”; a slide version of the Rolling Stones’ “Honky-Tonk Woman”; and Joni Mitchell’s “Big Yellow Taxi”.  We attended his art show on Saturday in Coronado, he’s a multi-talented individual.

9:00 Ian Douglas: Added some more contemporary tunes: Daphne Loves Derby’s “Pollin and Salt”;  Death Cab for Cutie’s “I Will Follow You Into The Dark”; his original, “Smash”; and Fall Out Boy’s “Golden”.  I love the names of the original bands.

9:15  Gregory Martin Campbell: I mentioned last week that he hadn’t played “Volare” lately, so this week he accommodated me with his very cool version of the Dean Martin classic; William Shakespeare’s “Lovers Love the Spring” (Music by Don McLean); Big Mo’s “Filling Station”; Herman’s Hermits’  “Ferry Across the Mersey”; and the Doobie Brothers’ “Black Water”.

If you were looking for variety in music, you got it this evening; just look at the song titles and artists represented.  We had good strong performers right up until the end—just another of a string of great evenings.

Be sure to mark your calendars for the July 16, at the Trolley Square Shopping Center’s Amphitheater in Santee. Celebrating ten years of the Wood ‘n’ Lips Open Mic, it will be from 10:00 in the morning until 6:00 p.m. with some of our best performers.

God Bless and have a good week.

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

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