The Antique Sandwich Company, Tacoma

Victory Music has been hosting the open mic at the Antique Sandwich Company for more than 22 years.  It’s the first open mic I can ever remember attending and I’m pretty sure the first one I ever played.   That was all a long time ago though, and it’s been a number of years since I headed to the little town of Ruston to catch what I’ve long thought of as the mother of all open mics in the South Puget Sound.   The Antique Sandwich Company is an all ages coffee/tea deli that feels straight out of a different era.  This is a bean-sprout whole-wheat free-trade joint that was, for years, the counter-culture meeting point between Seattle and Olympia.  If you wanted to find the folk scene or even just a long haired hippy during the 80’s and 90’s in Tacoma, this was a good place to start.  There is no doubt this place has a deep and long history in promoting acoustic music  but after attending their Tuesday night open mic I was surprised to find out how far it seemed to have fallen.

Things are run a little differently with Victory Music and this is the only open mic I have been to where they charge a cover for all non-musicians.  $3.00 per adult and $1.00 per child.  It’s also the only open mic I’ve been to where they are in charge of filling out the sign-up sheet.  You fill out a sign-up/release form (to accommodate the fact that every open mic will be broadcast on www.Tacoma.fm) and they create the running order.  This means that it doesn't matter if you arrive early to get a better spot, as that will have nothing to do with what time you perform.  On the night I was there, there was only a handful of non-musicians in the crowd and I have no doubt some of the people who did perform, did so only because they didn’t want to pay a cover simply to watch their friends.  

The 20 or so musicians on the list broke down into two distinct categories.  One being a large youth contingent getting their first experiences in performing on stage and the second being the Victory Music old guard who sat in their clutch near the back of the room.  The two sides didn’t mingle.  

How would I rate it?

I had a lot of expectations going to this open mic.  I have always held it as the biggest and best of all open mics here in Tacoma.  There was a time that this event attracted some of the best singer/songwriters, folk purists, blue grass pickers our area has to offer, but to me, time has not been kind to this open mic.  I was shocked by how seriously it took itself, from the mc’s shushing of the crowd, to being rebuffed after asking if Doug Mackey and I could swap places on the list because they didn’t do that, as it was “too complicated”, to the fact that the instruments could only be miked and not plugged in.  It all left me feeling that this place needed to lighten up a little quit taking itself so seriously.

Of all the open mics I’ve played in these past few weeks, this one was the least enjoyable.  Perhaps it was my own elevated expectations since I had held it in such high esteem, but to me it felt over-bureaucratic and self important all the while having some of the worst music and musicians I’ve heard in quite a while.  Time was you would sit through all of that to also hear some of the best, but last Tuesday night, that time seemed like many long years ago.

As I left, I kept thinking of Norma Desmond ranting in Sunset Boulevard “I *am* big. It's the *pictures* that got small.”   This last Tuesday that picture felt very small indeed.

Details:

Tuesday nights, sign up at 6:30.  Music starts at 7:00 pm and runs until 10:00.