Carrolton Station. Tales of the great Crescent city, begin while I listen to the Subdudes latest album on my laptop and try to recreate the adventures of a small town girl seeking self-expression through music. “Why New Orleans?", my friends and family have asked many times, but unless you’ve been here and felt the musical magic, felt the warmth of the people who share that music and danced in the sultry slippery air, you might not get it. The most difficult part of this leg of life is that I am spending so much time alone, as I was that night at the local haunt called Carrolton Station. I had only lived in town for about a week and decided to go to open mic night, in hopes of finding a guitarist who might want to ‘come out and play’ with me.

Here’s how it works, they have a blackboard and at 8:00 the players sign up and get to play three songs each, in the order of sign up. Music begins at nine and their were about 15 people that night, I was number 8. I chose only two songs, not knowing the “three song rule”, but I chose the songs I could best entertain with and spin an interesting tale. Waiting ..... at least for me, is an exercise in patience and I’m not very good at it, but my shot finally comes as the MC calls my name. I walk toward the stage feeling nervous, anxious and leery as I don’t even have one friend here tonight for support, but I do have one thing, determination. The MC looks me over, an inquisitive expression on his face, he asks, “Where’s your guitar?”, I reply “I don’t have one”. He just shakes his head, shrugs his shoulders and I slowly step onto the stage. As a performer, I always hope that someday I will stop having those butterflies in my stomach and stop questioning my abilities, stop asking myself why in the hell I’m doing this, but this night I was a little shaky and all those feelings were reeling in my mind.

As I turn around and look at the audience I realize that they are all musicians, who do tend to be the most critical listeners. This thought does not help my confidence, but as I said I am determined. I also realize that the audience has the same question in their mind, “Where is the guitar?”, so I begin with an impromptu comment that “I’m here tonight because I’ve made a few really big mistakes in my life. The first was I married my guitar player, the second was, I divorced him.” The audience responds appropriately with a few chuckles, so I’m off on a good foot. My first song “You can have my husband, but please don’t mess with my man”, went over pretty well. Several people clapping along with me and at the end, applause and everything. Whew!!!

The next song I have sung acappella before and am more confident about, so I’m feeling better and ready to roll.  The song is number 10 on my CD, it’s the Grace Potter tune, “Nothing but the Water”. It’s a wonderful gospel sounding song that I fell in love with and so have many of my friends/listeners.  I’m singing, feeling good, on key and suddenly, in the middle of the song I hear a familiar, yet intrusive sound. My cell phone begins to ring and guess what it’s playing? “When the Saints go Marching In”. For any vocalists reading this little story, you know that it’s a little tricky staying on key when a different song is playing at the same time. I’m sure my face turns red at the moment of musical collision, but I know ‘the show must go on’, so. . . to my own amazement the phone finally stops ringing and I finish the song. While speaking to some of the guys in the audience I discover that it wasn’t just my phone, but several phones ringing and they were impressed that I managed to stay on key through the entire event. After I step off the stage the MC said “Well you gotta hand it to her, she has balls getting up there all by herself, let’s give her a hand”. And the final irony, I check my phone to see who the intruder was, and of course it was my wonderful husband Dean, calling from 1600 miles away, he felt he was missing something and intuitively had to call me. So there you have it, stay tuned for many more adventures in the Crescent city!!!!!