Billy Watson.TV - Mr Blues

Last Saturday night I hosted an open mic night in Mr Blues. I had been asking the owner Münir on and off for the past few years and he was always resistant to my requests but on December 21st on my way to an ‘End of the World’ Party, I popped in to see him. My intuition led me there.

I had been trying to host it at Shakers Pub but for various reasons we couldn’t seem to organise it.

When I walked into Mr Blues that night, I knew that I had to ask him again. I don’t know if crossing the Galactic Centre had anything to do with it but he was a bit more open to my idea, once he’d remembered who I was that is because he hadn’t seen my with long hair and a beard. Maybe it was the ‘wild look’ that done the trick.

Anyway, he agreed that I could try it once but with no music, just a spoken word evening. Ok, fine suited me. The only thing was, who the hell was I going to convince to perform as there isn’t exactly a cultural scene in Antalya for this type of thing.

Shaker Pub Open Mic Night Promo

Mr Blues Open Mic Night Promo

So I went ahead with the night anyway and although practically no-one was there at 6pm when it was due to start, by about 7pm we had enough to go ahead with a show. As it turned out about 30 people came along at some stage of the night and I think most enjoyed themselves.

I was a bit nervous beforehand as I wasn’t sure if the audience would be able to understand me but fortunately, there were quite a few expats there and they could explain to the Turkish people exactly what I was on about.

Here are the videos of my part of the show.

Part One

At this point and also another twice, Stephen Fahring took the stage. Although he is a teacher and used to standing in front of people I think it was his first time in an open mic night. I have the videos of him performing but rather than show them here, we are going to work on his act a bit before the next open mic night and try to develop the material and his stage presence a bit, but all in all he done a good job.

Part Two

Stephen had talked about meditation a bit during his performance and so I used that as a way to go into a poem I wrote many years ago called Honest Crook.

After I read it Banu asked what a Crook was and after I told her she said, “Ah, so Honest Crook is a paradox?”

Exactly Banu and thanks for paying attention. 🙂

Part Three

In this section I read a poem about my Father In Law’s toilet, whereby I caused it to erupt because I neglected to use the toilet bin for my used condoms and then I went on a bit of a rant about living in Turkey because nothing goes smoothly here at all.

After the interval I showed a couple of videos. One was called Success or Failure which was a poem set to picture and the other was Mr Politician where I sing along to pictures.

I showed these to let people see that they can do something on their computer and present it at the evening but I also wanted to set the bar really low for the Karaoke singers, so that they wouldn’t feel embarrassed to perform after the Open Mic section had finished. So with that I sang one of my songs.

Billy – If You

Ellen – Will You Still Love Me Tomorrow

As you can hear though, my voice is pretty brutal so I was just about to invite Ellen onto the stage when she volunteered herself. A few nights previously she had told me if I learned the chords to this Carole King song that she would sing it. I didn’t manage to do that but I did download the Karaoke version and she went with that.

I asked if she wanted me to sing along with her at any point and she said “sure, for the comedy factor”. I wasn’t going to join in as I knew I would kill it, but I thought she was singing a bit quiet so I did join in for a bit, to get her to up the volume. The crowd wasn’t too impressed with this though and I soon shut my trap and let Ellen’s talent be appreciated fully.

Yes No Game

A couple of days prior to the event I had seen some Liverpool football players do the Yes No Game as part of the clubs social media strategy and I thought it looked like a fun thing to do. So as a way to get others involved I suggested the game and then dragged up Caner, Banu and eventually Stephen to compete in it. As you can see it was quite good fun and I will probably make it a regular thing at open mic nights.

Part Four

The night was drawing to a close so I thought I’d wrap it up with a story about my family’s trip to Kenya. Then Aynur wanted to sing a song and while she was choosing a song I continued with another couple of poems.

During this section my friend Utku bought me an Irish Whisky which was much appreciated.

I actually had a tip jar on the bar but neglected to mention that to the audience. I done the same thing at the Edinburgh Festival most days. I am not very good at asking for money but I’d like to say thanks to those of you who did pop something in the box. Cheers. 🙂

Karaoke

After the show was over I invited people to sing on Karaoke. Well done to Aynur, Derya, Ferhan, Julie, Vicky and Pinar for giving it a go. In fact, Pinar came up to sing not once, not twice but three times!

I would also have said well done Banu for singing Get Back by the Beatles but after 30 seconds she ran off the stage and I had to plunder through it myself, but at least she had good intentions I suppose.