‘The scene here sucks,’ says pretty much every third musician you talk to (in any town).
Funny thing is, there’s almost always somebody on a stage in your town doing something cool, and having an absolute blast at it.
For Phoenix, that stage was at the MIM Theater last night: Arizona Singer-Songwriters in the Round II.
Four guitars, in the hands of four relatively well-known local acoustic performers, four mics, one stage, one night.
It was a remarkable show. And not just for the space cello-playing Cirque du Soleil musician they brought along with them . . .
- It was the easy, egoless humor shared between the players (genuine audience laughter throughout the night — better than some stand-up shows I’ve attended)
- It was the artistic generosity (these guys knew each other’s songs and sang earnest harmonies to prove it)
- It was the back stories on why and how songs were written (Obadiah Parker’s The District story blew us all away)…
And it happened because four great musicians who could just have easily seen themselves as competitors in a city that isn’t Nashville or LA, chose to see themselves as not so unconnected.
Somewhere, there’s another singer-songwriter making her short list of local players she can’t wait to take your town with.
Is it you?