In which a writer discovers why it might be worth showing up at an open mic even though neither he nor a friend is performing.
Easy Paradise Open Mic
The Red Room at KBG Bar
85 E. 4th St., New York
Monday Sept. 11
It’s late. We’re late. But the friend I’m walking with, a regular at this specific open mic, though he’s not performing tonight, assures me that it goes late every time, the show is impossible to miss. I fear this information is an ill-omen portending of disorganization.
We arrive at the bar, the historic and notorious KGB, known by all for its catering to a rowdy crowd of degenerate literati. But it is the speakeasy on the third floor for which we are headed. Following our ascent, out of breath at the top of three flights of stairs not counting the grimy stoop outside, we slide in hoping not to disturb the performance currently underway.
“What? You don’t laugh?”
There’s a comedian doing crowd work, and my heart plummets …
Nobody likes open mics. Plenty of people do open mics, but nobody goes. There’s no audience. It’s not a show…
That, however, doesn’t stop the performers from treating it like the only shot they’ve got. And it might, for now, be the only outlet some of them have.
Clair Donaher, another comedian, opens her set: “Hey! Do you like my boots?”
She’s wearing yoga pants and a pair of gaudy galoshes that threaten to swallow her knees.
She’s fresh to the City. Her jokes, while choppy and new, tell familiar, queasy tales of life in NYC — being swindled out of large sums of money by “fundraising” teenagers in Washington Square, teaching finance bros how to love again, and intimacy being complicated by one’s own insecurities …
Whether hosted in an art gallery, crammed into a used bookstore, or inconveniencing the closing staff of a coffee shop, the gathering of an open mic, like the raising of a revival tent or clamoring assemblage of the county fair, is an event which, for me, sets in the belly a heavy, sick-sweet, nostalgic nausea. Like many writers, I came up, gained confidence, and made my first friends in the trade at open mics. There’s nothing like that feeling of jumbled guts, cold sweat in a cramped room, constant burning need to pee, and anxiously counting the minutes before your moment to get onstage and impress everyone exactly as little as you have been yourself. There’s a spirit of competition in the air, an ambition to be the performer whose name drips from everyone’s lips after the show. But, again, there’s no show to steal …
For a performer, the experience can border on humiliating. As an audience member, I discovered at this week’s open mic at the KGB Red Room, it’s an absolute pleasure. From the position of observer, the nervous hum becomes human electricity — second-hand embarrassment transmutes toward a deeply earnest and humane empathy. With nothing at stake, the audience becomes advocate.
A young man with a guitar rises to the mic. His name is Luke Herbermann. He tunes, checks the sound: “C‑can you all, can everyone hear me?”
An encouraging applause erupts. Over the dying claps, Luke introduces himself, his song. He stumbles through a semi-rehearsed anecdote about or explanation for the upcoming tune’s composition and, finding the threads frayed and attention waning, begins to play.
I can’t understand a word being sung, but I can tell he knows his instrument, and his tune is true. His hands are sure. His voice is sure as well, strong; it’s the microphone’s fault, it’s the warm murmuring of other performers cavorting at their tables that drown out the subtleties of the lyrics. The guitar is too loud. But it sounds golden. The voice breaks through the shimmer. God, it sounds good. His hands are sure and quick and he sounds good.
Everyone can tell.
He’d said in his introduction that the song was about how sometimes struggle is to one’s ultimate benefit.
This is the truth…
The lyric that rings out from Herbermann with the most clarity is the soaring, tearful refrain toward the end of the piece: “I’ve been left on my own!”
And we are all here together.
I’ve not been to an open mic in quite some time, and I’ve certainly never gone to one that I, or a close friend, wasn’t performing at. So, maybe they’re all like this, maybe they’re all glorious carnivals of humility and vulnerability.
Or, maybe it’s only this one, hosted every Monday from 8 p.m. to as late as possible by Matt Proctor in the East Village’s KGB Red Room Speakeasy. Perhaps it’s the environment that makes this event feel subtly transcendent: Small upstairs bar, dim lighting, tiny stage, and a clawfoot bathtub stowed in the corner; the space fashioned like a secret known by everybody.
Could be Proctor himself: an uncannily charismatic goof introducing each act as though he’d personally watched them achieve stardom, following their careers from their conception in utero onward; an unashamed champion for every performer whose own self-assured stage presence does more to raze the field than it does cement himself as the center. But he is the center, the ringleader, and every time he takes the mic, to send someone off or bring someone up, one can’t help feeling a surge of excitement at the sureness of his presence.
As one performer, having to leave early, remarked, “I hate leaving like this. I feel like I’m letting Matthew down …” That is not to say, however, that it’s his show… again, there is no show… And there shouldn’t be.
Proctor introduces a poet, Dillon Laurie, who anyone would be sure is in fact an old friend.
He takes the stage; Proctor leaves. Dillon trembles. He says: “I know I’m shaking, but it will be fine. I’ve been telling myself it will be fine. This is my first time and it will get easier…”
A line or two into his reading the tremors quiet, his hands are still:
Every intimacy bounces through my mind like dusted silver balls in a dusted, decades-old pinball machine.
I reach for the moving pieces, try to flatten and stitch them together…
The exercise of the open mic is not, for the audience, extractive — It’s not about sieving precious stones from refuse. It is about the preciousness of the rough: for this is where diamonds and gold come from. It is a celebration of the work-in-progress. The open mic is a joyous perversion of the relationship between audience and performer. All promise is thrown aside, the pact of quality and attention is broken before it’s made, no holds are barred, and everyone gets a shot.
And I mean everyone gets a shot. Sign-ups are managed through DMing the event’s Instagram (@easyparadisemag) and the show goes until the list has been run to the bottom. Sign up or join the chaos passively, but trust that Proctor knows what he’s doing … It’s not a show, but it’s also never not a party…
The whole performance from this past Monday (9/11) is on YouTube, yet another kindness committed by our tireless Matthew Proctor — which is lovely. But, as with all great things and experiences too authentic for honesty, you had to be there…
Luckily, there’s always next Monday.
The open mic begins at 8 p.m. Mondays at the Red Room at KGB Bar.
