Played at Centreville’s Austin Grill

Last night I played a short set at the Austin Grill in Centreville VA. They are trying out a songwriter night on Wednesdays there from 8 to 10 pm. four performers, roughly half an hour each minus five minutes for setup time in between.

The evening was fun and filled with energetic performers. Mike wilkinson was singing oldies and jamming leads on top of his own rhythm parts using a delay.

Dana austin was rowdy and crazy, singing some verbose and frenzied originals along with a guy on fretless bass. Dana did a couple bluesy rockers with rapid-fire lyrics that reminded me of Bob duroe.

Then I played my set with my now-standard 12-string configuration, plugging the guitar into the Fishman Aura pedal to get a bassy, woody sound. I played and sang well and got some nice feedback from the folks there. One friend asked me if my song “Tree” was written by Gordon bok, because it sounds like something GB would do. What a compliment.

Richard white followed me and played his original stuff on loud, overdriven acoustic-electric. I’ve heard Richards handful of standard numbers a lot lately, but this was the first time I heard him turn up the volume and rock it a little. Richard divulged that he was using DADFAD tuning, which I have not tinkered with much. I’ll have to give that one a try sometime, because Richard gets some crazy notes and harmonies out of his guitar with that tuning.

I had two friends come along to hear me, and there were two others there to listen that I also know. Otherwise there really was no audience, which was unfortunately. I think it would be great if we songwriters could have another place to be heard. Hopefully this restaurant will make the Wednesdays work for the long run.