The new Mountainside Open Mic & Art Night emphasizes openness.<\/p>\n
The weekly open mic series at the Rookery was conceived as an all-ages, all-genres showcase for musicians of all stripes.<\/p>\n
“We want something that’s more open to family and teens — acoustic stuff, stuff you might not play at a bar,” event organizer and musician Marian Call told the Capital City Weekly. “We want an atmosphere where people aren’t afraid to do something scary.”<\/p>\n
The open mic series runs through Dec. 12, and the last event will be a party at a to-be-determined location that will include a display of the sketches, doodles and other art generated by listeners.<\/p>\n
They start at 7 p.m. on Wednesdays with sign-ups starting at 6:30 p.m. The run will include an Oct. 31 open night, and costumes are welcomes.<\/p>\n
“As long as they’re small enough for you to fit comfortably,” Call said.<\/p>\n
Wednesday’s open mic featured a variety of performers. There were acoustic strummers, keyboard players, a capella singers, and Philip Stewart even plugged in to play a goofy original.<\/p>\n
“I was trying to come up with something, and I couldn’t,” Stewart said. “And I said, wait, that’s the song.”<\/p>\n
So he performed a ditty about his inability to free himself from the clutches of songwriting cliches and ended with a surprisingly velveteen Barry White impression.<\/p>\n
Each open mic also serves as a showcase for established performers, such as Juneau Cabaret.<\/p>\n
Heather Mitchell, Allison Holtkamp and Alyssa Fischer took turns singing classics, while Tom Locher and David Sheakley-Early provided accompaniment on the keys and drums.<\/p>\n
The Rookery’s tables were full for the various performances with some late arrivers temporarily relegated to standing, until they could find one of the scarce empty seats.<\/p>\n
“It’s obvious people really want this,” Stewart said noting the crowd.<\/p>\n
Even those who didn’t perform songs had an opportunity to be artists.<\/p>\n
“It’s also a visual arts night,” Call said. “Everyone’s got a sketch or drawing or crocheting to work on, but there’s always video games and Netflix.”<\/p>\n
Tables were equipped with loose sheets of papers, markers, pens, pencils and behemoth 96-crayon boxes of Crayolas.<\/p>\n
Julianna Bibb, who also performed original compositions on the keyboard, brought her light box and drawing implements and created some manga-influenced drawings.<\/p>\n
“It’s just me getting some work done,” Bibb said. “I use the light box because I’m not using Photoshop.”<\/p>\n
Others hacked it out with less technology.<\/p>\n
Kayla Shepherd was part of a group of University of Alaska Southeast transfer students in attendance, and she worked on a few crayon drawings while listening to music.<\/p>\n
Shepherd said it was her friend, Zoe Stonetree’s, idea to come to the open mic.<\/p>\n
“We’re pretty new to Juneau,” Shepherd said. “We were looking around at all the things to do and found this.”<\/p>\n
\u2022 Contact arts and culture reporter Ben Hohenstatt at 523-2243 or bhohenstatt@juneauempire.com.<\/em><\/b><\/p>\n Crayons, guitars and cabaret. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":474,"featured_media":37713,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_stopmodifiedupdate":false,"_modified_date":"","wds_primary_category":9,"footnotes":""},"categories":[9,4],"tags":[73,116,175],"yst_prominent_words":[],"class_list":["post-37712","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-home","category-news","tag-ccw","tag-ccw-features","tag-music"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/37712","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/474"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=37712"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/37712\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/37713"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=37712"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=37712"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=37712"},{"taxonomy":"yst_prominent_words","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/yst_prominent_words?post=37712"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}
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