Edinburgh Open Mics - Out of the Bedroom - Tuesdays

Edinburgh is a great place for open mics and you can pretty much find one every night of the week. Plus, there's always going to be one to suit you as there are many different styles of night all over the city.

I've made it my mission to try to visit more, so I can write about them on here. Why? Because as I said, there are some great nights around the city, some that I've yet to discover. Second, I need some stuff to write about on this blog! So I'm going to try to visit a few more and write about them, so you can get the low down here. Don't forget to visit our Facebook page where we have a full list of Edinburgh open mics.

Out of the Bedroom
When - Tuesdays
Where - The Montague, 81-85 St. Leonards Street, Edinburgh
Start - 8pm
Sign up from - 7:30pm
Lowdown - If you're after a dedicated originals only, singer/songwriter night where the crowd is extremely attentive, you can't go wrong with Out of the Bedroom.

Lindsay & the Storm performing at Out of the Bedroom. Photo Copyright © 2011, Malcolm McLean

Out of the Bedroom is something of an Edinburgh institution. It's been running for longer than I can remember at various different venues over the city. It takes place every Tuesday evening at the Montague on the South-side. Past venues have included the Waverley, the Canongate and the Tron - but it's current venue is funnily enough where I used to run my open mic a few yeas ago. Back then it was called the Maltings.

The night is originals only and it's a great place for songwriters that are just starting out, who want to air their music in front of a forgiving, friendly crowd. It's run by a committee who take turns to host the night each week.

Each week, there is a featured act, so if you're looking for your first gig then this is a good place to start. Often, after you've been going along to OOTB for a while, you might get asked to do one.

As with the majority of open mics around the city, Out of the Bedroom is full of lovely friendly people who will take you in and make you feel very at home. So don't be afraid to go along and say hi to people.

Check out some photos of the night from the talented Malcolm McLean here.

SoundCloud

So bear with me. This blog still needs a bit of work. I'm getting to it.

Anyway, I've started using SoundCloud to record each week's open mic. It is a great little website.

Each week I'm recording everyone that plays (and agrees to be recorded). I'll try and get their entire set up, depending on the recording quality.

So far the recordings are sounding pretty good. I'm taking a line straight out of the desk into my laptop, and am just using Garage Band on the mac to record the night. Then I splice up each musicians set over the week and get it up onto SoundCloud.

I'll back date some of the recordings. So see below, and have a listen. You can download individual tracks to keep forever!

Open mic 02/04/10 by Ale House Open Mic

Open mic 26/03/10 - Beatles Week by Ale House Open Mic

Open mic 12/03/10 by Ale House Open Mic

McEwans Ale House Open Mic - 26/02/10 by Ale House Open Mic

A history.

Welcome to the new McEwans Ale House Open Mic blog. I wanted to create this as a place to document each open mic at the McEwans Ale House.

Firstly, let me tell you a bit about the history of this open mic. I've been running open mics on and off now for about 5 years and I kind of see this as a descendant of the very first one I ran.

I first started at a place called the Home Street Bar in Tollcross, Edinburgh. A friend, Dave Andrews asked me to help him run an open mic as he didn't have much experience of them.



The Home Street Bar open mic was good fun. It was a tiny little bar, and the sound equipment was bodged together at best. Despite this, it was where I first met some very good friends and excellent musicians who would faithfully follow me to my next open mic at the Maltings. Toby Cooke, Aaron Wright, Alan Ross, Paul Gladwell and Al Shields to name a few.

Unfortunately in the summer of 2006, the Home Street bar got locked up by some bailiffs and that was the end of the open mic. I managed to liberate my sound equipment and was invited to bring my open mic to the Maltings by Mr Steven Blewitt and Mr Peter Brooke, two of the nicest land lords you'll ever meet.



I started the open mic at the Maltings around July 2006 and it went strong until October 2009. Again, through the Maltings, I many more fantastic musicians, too many to name. But it was great to see a few musicians that came through the open mic such as Marcus Mumford (of Mumford & Sons) and Aaron Wight (of Aaron Wright and the Aprils) that are now signed and doing extremely well. I also met the members of my band, Matt Norris and the Moon.



Unfortunately, Steven and Peter left the Maltings in 2008 and the pub began to go downhill from there. And eventually, in October 2009, I called the open mic off.



And that brings us to now. After a couple of months break, I was yearning to be back on the open mic wagon and was approached by the McEwan Ale House.