Friday, July 22, 2016

My name is Kevin Tidemand.  I live in Ham Lake, Minnesota.  I am a musician and an Open Mic'r.  My open mic experience started a year ago.   I live in Minneapolis, a hotbed of open mic venues and prolific songwriters.  Until a year ago, I had no notion that I would become one of them.

I spent my professional career as an engineer at various high tech companies in Minnesota.   In my youth, I was an avid musician and songwriter, but as is commonly  the case, life took over.  Many of my friends continued with music in their life in one form or another to fulfill their love of music.   Although far from the music community, I had a great engineering career, have a wonderful family, and have a great life.  About a year ago, I decided to start writing songs again after a 20 year hiatus.  I restarted this process to rekindle a passion and to prepare for what I might want to do after retirement.  As part of my re-learning experience, I checked out a few open mic's in the twin cities.  What I found was rich subculture of dedicated and passionate songwriters of all ages, musical abilities and styles, and walks of life.

Over the last year, I have discovered that there is an underground musical universe composed of thousands of songwriters across the country who are committed to the art of musical self expression and to sharing and learning from others.  It is largely an off the grid community of songwriters not aspiring beyond sharing and learning from other songwriters, music for music's sake.   The music is raw and unprocessed.  Much of it does not fit into the mainstream but is personal with human stories behind it.  It is not so much about the music but the stories.  Younger open mic'rs have aspirations of being successful in the music business and use the open mic venues to hone their skills.  Middle age open micr's frequently want a creative diversion in their otherwise busy lives.  Old timers are story tellers with lots of stories to tell.  Skill levels range from beginners to professionals.

There are around 34 open mic venues in the twin cities area composed of coffee houses, small pubs and large bars.   There are websites that provide information on open mic events in Minnesota and around the country, such as http://openmikes.org/ and http://www.openmic.us/.  Open mic mic events are held almost every night of the week in most large cities.    Many open mic events are composed of performers, along with their friends and family.   It is a close community of artists.

I want to explore and experience this community of open mic artists around the country.   I'm blessed to be old enough to be able to leave my engineering gig and young enough to experience this vibrant community around the country.

Behind every song there is a songwriter and a story.  There are stories within the songwriter community in the twin cities (of which I will tell in upcoming posts) and I want to tell stories of songwriters in other cities, large and small, throughout the country.

This blog will document my experiences and the personal human stories of open mic'rs around the country.  My trip will take me from Minnesota, east, south, west and back.   At this point, I'm not sure exactly where it will lead or how long it will take.  I believe it will be a great experience worth writing about.