Open Mic Nights: Scott Lesman’s Musical Circus

Olympia’s a good town for open mics. The ratio of musicians to population is high, amateurism is honored, and the open mic settings allow those on the stage and those in the chairs or on the stools to mingle and speak to one another, look each other in the eye, shake each other’s hands.

Open mic nights exist in an alternate universe from almost everything that characterizes contemporary pop music. At these small, intimate events, the music is loose and spontaneous—not auto-tuned or fed through an array of digital processors, or performed by little costumed figures dancing to an elaborate choreography on a faraway stage.

These sessions can also be as essential to musicians as oxygen. They can be where musicians begin performing, where they try out new material or resurrect old stuff, or simply where they express their music. Whether gifted or not, whether skilled and practiced or not, they come to play because they want to or need to. We’re a species that not only loves music, but also loves to sing and play it—and wants others to hear it—and open mic nights offer the opportunity.

The most frequent, reliable, and longest lived open mic series in Olympia is Scott Lesman’s. Having set aside earlier jobs in order to do this one, Scott has assumed it as something of a calling. He has an almost absolute commitment to doing the open mic events and to doing them well. He’s utterly reliable and committed to the community of Olympia musicians who play at the events, and he feels honored and happy to do what he’s doing.

Scott is also a musician, which is not at all a necessary attribute for running open mic nights well, but his performances don’t interfere with his maintaining the rest of the show. He sometimes plays by himself, at others with a bass player and percussionist. He plays solid, engaging rhythm guitar and has an excellent, notable voice—a resonant baritone that makes you turn your head. He writes and sings many of his own songs, and covers others. When the rhythm session is onstage with him, the tempo gets quicker, and the music develops a syncopated pulse that audiences like and respond to.

However, his performing is only a small part of the job. Mondays through Thursdays, around 8 PM, Scott loads scaffolding, speakers, amplifier, mixing board, microphones and stands, struts, cables, and other essentials into his van and heads for one of the four venues where he puts together and presides over each night’s open mic session. Some time between 9 and 10 PM, the whole business is ready: carpet on the floor, 3-d tapestry hanging behind the stage, sound and lighting systems mounted and ready, microphones arranged, musicians’ sign-up list set out for the evening.

Over decades, I’ve played on small stages in clubs all across the country, and what Scott sets up is superior to almost all open mic events I’ve seen or played in. He takes exceptional care with the sound—he gets a warm, natural sound, clear to both the musicians and the audience, which is rarer than you might think. Plus, the fairly elaborate arrangement of lights and furnishings make the setting feel like a real stage even if it’s all wedged into a corner of a bar or tavern.

On Monday nights the venue is The Westside Tavern, on Tuesdays it’s Tugboat Annie’s, on Wednesday The Pig Bar—attached to South Bay BBQ—and on Thursdays it’s Buzz’s Tavern. These are all places where alcohol is served, but otherwise they’re not much alike. Tugboat Annie’s is more of a restaurant than the others. The Westside and Buzz’s are both typical Northwest taverns, with pool tables and prominent TVs. The Pig Bar is a small, often crowded room with a bar running its length, no pool tables, and just a couple of smallish TVs parked where they don’t intrude; the restaurant is closed by the time the open mic session begins, so the bar is what you get except on warm, dry nights, when the music moves out to the patio and its colored lights.

Each of these places has its own character, its own crowd. At all of them, some nights are busy, some not, and the nightly audience, large or small, varies in its attention to the music.

In other words, open mic nights vary. The musicians are young, they’re old, they perform singly and in small groups; sing traditional songs or songs they’ve written, play and sing well … or not. Generally they accompany themselves with guitars, mostly acoustic guitars but not always; occasionally there’s a second guitar, a bass, or some percussion—never a full drum set that I’ve seen. There is an occasional accordion or banjo, a violin or harmonica, and of course, as these are open mic nights, someone might walk in the door with something unexpected, a hurdy-gurdy, autoharp, or swordfish trombone.

Some nights, or some sets during a night, things come together: the musicians are on, the room is warm and receptive, and the musicians are playing and singing as well they can on their best nights. When they step off the carpet that defines the stage, people often smile, shake their hands, and say something nice. That’s the human connection around music that people have experienced for thousands of years, and it still lives. In the midst of it all is Scott, encouraging, clapping, calling out in approval, calling the name of whoever just performed, enthusiastic and genuine in support.

There’s not much in the way of money or other material rewards—if the musicians are lucky, maybe a free beer or a sweet smile.

But above all there’s the music, the joy of playing and singing, of the intensity that comes out of playing for a live audience, all of presided over by the spirits of honky-tonks and coffeehouses and ad hoc gatherings in churches or YMCAs or YWCAs all over the country, a tradition that goes back over fifty years and still lives in Olympia thanks to the persistence and devotion of Scott Lesman, and to nature of Olympia and its grassroots musical culture. ◙