The Stonegate Restaurant and Bar, Tacoma

Doug Mackey and I headed out to The Stonegate Restaurant and Bar (5419 S Tacoma Way) for their Thursday night Acoustic Open Mic.  The Stonegate is a good sized, 21 and older, bar with a band sized stage near the front door.  Although everything I read about this open mic said “Acoustic” once we got there I realized that I might have brought the wrong guitar. 

Billy Stoops is the open mic MC and for the first hour his band The Rectifiers played a blues driven set.  I was first up after the band played and played before an appreciative and fairly attentive crowd and right after I was done the band fired it back up, this time with a guest guitar/singer and that was pretty much how the rest of the night went.  This “Acoustic Open Mic” is really much more of a blues jam, an old Tacoma-school night of Northwest R&B.  

Billy Stoops looked and sounded pretty good for a guy who had just gotten off the plane from Mexico earlier that evening.  He’s been hosting the open mic for a little over a year, and last Thursday night he had the place hopping. 

 

How would I rate it?

Nice crowd, a good PA system and well organized were all pluses.  Stoops starts things off at 9 and plays for almost an hour before opening up the stage for other acts. There's a sign-up sheet next to the stage as well as a tip jar.

Waiting through an hour set of the host’s band, finding out it’s really more of an electric blues scene than the acoustic singer/songwriter scene as the name suggests, and the poor acoustics of the room are all minuses.  Next time I go, I think I’ll bring the electric instead and let it rip.

The crowd is nice and attentive, but they’re looking to get their groove on.  There are some great old school blues players in the Tacoma area, and on any given Thursday night you’ll find a number of them at the Stonegate trading licks.  A few weeks back at Dirty Oscars Annex I felt like I was the oldest one in the room, Thursday, if not for Jake Westhoff  (From Where Sails Meet Rails) who I dragged out,  I would have definitely felt like the youngest.