Hey, guys. Something kind of cool happened this past week.

There's a nearby open mic that I've been going to for about the past year and a half (at the building pictured in the thumbnail). My friend and former  Drama_Armada bandmate  sedge also lives nearby, and attends regularly. Not really being a 'live' musician, I usually just sing to backing tracks of my original songs. But recently, on a few occasions, I've been invited to sit in on the drums during other peoples' sets, as some of the other performers learned that I used to play. The first time it happened, I was nervous as hell. I hadn't played the drums in 30 years, and never really thought I was all that good at it in the first place. But it seemed to go well, and soon after, another musician asked me to play drums for them during their set.

This past Thursday night, it happened again. What made this night extra-special though, was that Sedge showed up with his bass guitar, and we both ended up becoming part of the same six-person 'group' on stage. Sedge and I have been friends for 20 years. We've written stuff together, and we've presented our songs onstage at conventions. But doing Drama Armada songs at FurFright was pretty much always us miming along to a pre-recorded track. Even on the couple of occasions that Sedge and I have performed actual live music, I've only been singing, not playing anything. Thursday night was the first time that he and I have ever been on stage together, performing on live instruments. It was very exciting for me, and because I was holding my own with the rest of the band even when we were playing songs I wasn't familiar with, I think it may have been the first time that I felt almost like an equal with other musicians. There was a point during one song where I thought to myself, "I think it might actually seem to the people watching this like I know what I'm doing" lol.

We performed five songs together with no rehearsing, including "Stand By Me", "Knockin' On Heaven's Door", "And It Stoned Me", "Angel From Montgomery" and my favorite of the bunch, John Cougar Mellencamp's "Authority Song". That's the song that Sedge and I decided we wanted to share. The personnel on this, to the best of my knowledge and memory, are a guy named Tim on guitar and lead vocals, a guy named Mark on guitar and backing vocals, a girl named Mel on backing vocals, a guy named Ron on keyboards, Sedge on bass, and me on drums and doing the high harmonies on backing vocals. Collectively, I'm referring to the combo as the 'Melrose Open Mic All-Stars', a name I'll probably continue to use for any future open mic collab uploads, regardless of the configuration of musicians.

Oh-- and the reason it starts the way it does is that someone suggested we do "In The Air Tonight", and although we didn't do it, I jokingly did the famous drum part anyway lol.

Hope you like it!