The World Has Turned...

And Left Me Here: About 15 minutes before 11, my scheduled shift end, I got ansy and decided to change clothes to go out to open mic while I was still at work. The guy who works over night is always ten minutes early anyway; I figured why not. So I get all changed out of my nice red shirt and black tie into my Beatles "Hard Days Night" tee shirt and jeans and go outside and start my car. At this point, I'm rip-roaring ready to go to open mic and tear the roof off.

A few minutes pass and I think, well, thats odd...he's usually here by now.

The last time I actually had plans after a 3-11pm shift, he was the one who was taking over for the third shift...and he was late.

11:00 becomes 11:05, and I'm still standing there at the desk in my Beatles T-shirt. Phone rings for a wake up call.

C'mon man...I wanted to BE there by now!

11:05 becomes 11:10. I realize now that there is a distinct possibility that he's not coming in for his shift...so I give the ol' boy a call. No answer. But the phone rings again a minute later.

"Hey...Tony.....uhhhhh...I just woke up."

He said he could get there in like twenty minutes (he lives close by) but I told him to take it slow because the roads were crap. I go out to my car and shut off the engine.

So there I was, watching the desk until 11:35 in my Beatles T-shirt. Great. :)

Tearing The Roof Off, Er...Wanted To: When I arrived at Clancys, there was noone performing. A video of John Mayer was on the TV screen blaring away. Amanda and I head up to the bar and order a beer and sure enough, the old man who "had soul" last week was sitting there. Told me he'd been waiting for me to show up for three hours!

So I plug in, get situated, and start monkeying around...for some reason felt like I didn't have much direction songwise. I couldn't think of any tunes to play or anything, so I started off with "Walk Don't Run" by The Ventures. Got some applause. For some reason, I was feeling nervous, and I can't figure out why, even as I write this.

Ralph, the old man, steps up and picks up his bass guitar and we start in a little jump blues in G and things sound frickin great, I'm getting into it, the guy is grinning ear to ear, and sure enough, Doug, who "is always there" walks up and plugs in his acoustic guitar and took things over, again.

Starts playing the same five songs he always plays, just like he did last week, and the week before the week before. Following me? ;)

I played along for a while, Ralph gave up after that one song and wandered off outside with some drunk preppy boy who kept pestering me about needing a drummer. But after about forty minutes, I honestly just wanted to go.

I'm not sure exactly where my night was ruined, whether it was the 3rd shift man being late or the weather being crap or Doug taking over (AGAIN), but it was not one of my better nights there. I'm going to have to learn some new songs for next week so I can just keep playing instead of giving up to someone who knows only a few tunes.