Songwriter's Night Gig

Time: June 20, 1996

Place: (Double Door Inn) in Charlotte, NC

The songwriter's nite is always a great time. Even when we don't play, you'll find me there. Jeff Williams of Lodestar created this event in order to encourage his friends to play their new and unfinished songs. I attended the first one of these and thought it was the coolest thing I had seen in Charlotte in a long time. Groups perform 3-4 songs each; performers usually try to do new material. I happened to see Jeff in a club two nites after this first Songwriter's Nite, and I introduced myself and told him how cool I thought it was.

At the next Songwriter's Nite, a band happened to cancel. Jeff spotted me in the audience and asked me to sit in. I did. Since then, I've pestered him to let me play whenever he can.

At this Songwriter's Nite, we went totally acoustic. In fact, Brian Mohrman and I performed without a bass player and a second guitarist. Brian played the hell out of some congas, and I played "acoustic funk".

I think I shocked everyone by opening with a spoken word piece. The whole room got quiet (even the pool players stopped) when I kicked into "The Thing U Love". I added an intro/outro spoken part to it and delivered it acapella. I was kinda nervous, since I've never done anything like that before.(Luckily, it went over.) Brian and I then did VERY acoustic versions of a couple of cuts off my cd. We even added in a new song. I had a lot of fun.

I got more crowd response out of this show than ever before, maybe we'll do some more stuff like this. If you haven't seen a Songwriter's Nite yet, PLEASE catch the next one. It's a great way to see a bunch of Charlotte bands at once. Plus...THEY SERVE BEER.