Themed Open Mike

Songs About Animals

Starting in April of 2011, I started hosting a monthly Themed Open Mike at local bar here in Ashland. The bar, one of my favorites, is called The Wild Goose. If you're ever in Ashland, OR, it's at 2365 Ashland Street. Lot's of live music, karaoke, and fun stuff going on all the time.

I play there on the Second Wednesday of every month, but this Themed Open Mike is on the First Wednesday of every month. Each month we limit the songs people can play to a different theme. The first one was "Songs About The Weather" and the following month was "Road Songs".

The next one, which will be June 1rst 2011 will be "Songs About Animals". Sign-up is at 7:30pm and the show starts around 8pm. So far these events have been a blast, really fun. It's been great to see what people come up with when they have a somewhat limiting theme. I'm not super picky about what people can play. Any song that mentioned roads or highways or cars or travel was fine for "Road Songs" night. The main thing is just to get people thinking and seeing what they can come up with. Spoken word artists, covers and original songs are all welcome.

Myself, I have many, many songs, so a limiting theme is actually welcome to help me figure out what to play. I have a list of many ideas for future themes that I bring to these events. At some point in the evening I read from the list and we all decide what the next month's theme will be. Here's what the list looks like right now:

Wild Goose Themed Open Mike Ideas

Break-up Songs

Bad Songs That You Love

Neil Young Night

Funny Songs

Songs About Losing

Political Songs

Songs About Songs/Singing/Music

Songs About Illegal Drugs

Drinking Songs

Sad Songs

Love Songs (We'll probably save this one for February...)

Favorite Songs That You Didn't Write

Songs About Food

Songs About The Ocean

Songs Of Regret

Songs About Work

Songs About Natural Disasters

Songs About The Seasons

Songs About Trains

Songs About Cities and States

And the ones we've used already:

Songs About The Weather (April 6^th, 2011)

Road Songs (May 4^th, 2011)

Songs About Animals (June 1rst, 2011)

If you're ever in Ashland and want to see if this event is still happening, please go to my site: www.GeneBurnett.com where you can not only find all of my music available for downloading free or with a donation, but there's a "Workshop and Performance Schedule" link at the top of every page.

And here's a link to an older post here about Open Mikes and why I love them: http://geneburnett.blogspot.com/2010/11/open-mikes.html