Open Mic Comes to the Grand Music Club,
Courtesy of Craig and Ruth Brandhorst
The first ever Open Mic night was February 29, 2024, followed by April 18 and June 13, all Thursday nights at the Cimarron Night Club. Per Craig, “The Music Club Board, as a whole, has been hugely supportive from the start,” and he thinks they can plan on an Open Mic night at least once per month now.
For the first Open Mic, they had 18 people sign up within a week and had to stop taking names. Allowing ten minutes per “act,” including equipment set-up, etc., 18 acts equal three hours. For June 13, the thinking was that, with the “snowbirds” gone, the sign-ups might be light. Craig and Ruth decided on 2 ½ hours, which equals 15 acts. Well, they received 12 responses within days and had to cut it off at 16. Open Mic night is certainly long overdue!
“Ruth has always been the one who was nudging me to play and sing,” says Craig. It was during college that she bought him a guitar – a little Yamaha that he still has and still plays. But he was in his 50s before she succeeded in getting him to play before a live audience. It was around 2010 when she nudged him right onto the stage at the monthly hootenanny at a place called Swallow Hill in Denver. “Without her push,” Craig says, “I don’t know that I would have played out at all.”
“That’s really why I care about Open Mics. That’s where I started, and where Ruth and I started together.” “I’d like folks to know that you can be new at this even if you’re not so new yourself. I stumbled into a wonderfully welcoming place with a great sound system and a kind audience.”
A year after Craig got started, he and Ruth were performing together as “Jewel and Sherman,” which referred to the intersection of streets up the block from where they lived. As an added experience, Craig became part of a duo with “a great guitar player named Dave Devitt” who he met at the hootenanny (also known locally as “The Hoot!”) They played “...at all kinds of places and made dozens of dollars,” he says.
Craig says that his goal for Open Mic at Grand is to create that same inclusive, welcoming environment he found at “The Hoot” in Denver: Again, “a wonderfully welcoming place with a great sound system and a kind audience.” At Open Mic at The Grand, Craig says “Everybody is welcome. Everybody is great at whatever level they’re at. You don’t have to be perfect or put on a show. It just takes showing up and being brave and finding out what you can do.”
Participants range from those who have done Open Mic events many times before to some who have never done something like this before. Per Craig, experienced performers are nervous or anxious; they’re just better at hiding it than the less experienced people.
So far, the best way to determine the order of performance has been to place prenumbered ping pong balls in a hat and let participants draw as they arrive. There is no charge to audience members, by the way. There is always a little time between acts, and using the Cimarron Night Club as the venue, people are free to leave and return, sit where they like, etc. There is an open bar, with the Music Club paying for the bar at the venue.
Craig and Ruth Brandhorst