There's a Joni Mitchell song about a clarinetist on a street corner who was "playin' real good for free". There are two things I like about that: live music and free stuff. As my old girl and I have recently discovered, the combination of the two can add up to lots of fun.
This summer has been a hot one in our neck of the suburbs and my wife and I were casting about one day for something to do to relieve the tedium of the summer doldrums that didn't cost an arm and a leg and would keep us in the air conditioning, or at least the shade. She was reading a local paper at the time and noticed an ad for a coffee shop a couple of miles down the road that has free live music on weekend evenings. Now, like a lot of retirees we don't usually go out on the weekends because that's the only time the folks who are still working have to get out and about and things tend to be more crowded than they are during the week when it's just us hoary old retired folks doddering around. We were kind of bored, though, so we thought we'd stop by the coffee shop to check out the music.
We were pleasantly surprised to find that the coffee shop had a couple of really good solo performers that evening. Both of them were singer-songwriters who played acoustic guitar and sang their own songs as well as covers of sort of folk and indie music. The space was so small that there wasn't a bad seat in the house. Everyone was within about five to 25 feet of the singers. So for the price of a cold coffee drink, in my wife's case, and a smoothie, in my case, we spent a pleasant hour and a half listening to live music.
We enjoyed the experience so much that we decided to start searching for other free live music venues in our area. We live close to a fairly large city that has lots of live music but we didn't want to drive into the city in the evening and besides that most of the live music venues in the city have a cover charge. It turned out, however, that there are lots of places to hear live music for free if you just look around for them and, in our case, most of them were pretty close to home. So about once a week for the last couple of months we have gone to a different place to hear free live music.
We've been to several coffee shops and have discovered that most of them tend to book solo acts or small groups that usually play jazz, blues, 1930's or 40's swing or what I think of as indie music. Generally all you have to do is buy a cup of coffee or a smoothie or something and you can sit there for a couple of hours listening to the music. The coffee houses we have gone to are pretty small so you can hear the music well and you get a chance to interact with the performers. I should probably mention here that a lot of these performers are playing for exposure and tips, so there is usually a tip jar nearby and we always make sure to drop a couple of bucks in it.
Another place we have found to listen to free live music is in small towns. There is a town near us that has some folks who get together on the square on Saturday evenings to jam, mostly doing country music but also some old rock and roll. There's no charge to sit on the courthouse steps and listen, although most people tip the musicians. We were sitting on the steps one evening this summer listening to the jam session and got into a conversation with an old boy sitting beside us. It turned out that he was vacationing alone and had been traveling around our area for the last week. He was on his way home when he saw the courthouse dome from the interstate and decided to stop by for a look. The jam session that was in progress was a happy surprise for him. He told us that he had been playing guitar and even writing his own songs for years and he wished he could join in. We encouraged him to do that but he was kind of reluctant to ask the musicians, whom he didn't know, if he could jam with them. Fortunately (or unfortunately, depending upon your point of view), my old girl is a lot less inhibited than that. She told the group on the square that the old boy sitting with us played guitar and would love to sit in on a few numbers. The musicians had a spare guitar so they asked our new found friend to come on down for a little picking and singing. He did just that and ended up jamming with them for over an hour, even singing and playing one of his own songs. Before he left to head home he came over and shook hands with us and thanked my wife for intervening for him with the singers on the square. He told us that that night was the highlight of his vacation. It just goes to show that you never know what you will find when you're looking for some inexpensive fun.
Of course sitting out on the courthouse square in the summer time is a little warm, even in the evening. For those that prefer their free live music indoors there are several restaurants and bars in our area that provide that. You do have to buy something to eat or drink, but there is no cover charge. Those places range from one with an indoor performance area and a pretty big outdoor stage to one with a little postage stamp sized boot scootin' area in the corner of the restaurant. We've enjoyed listening to live music in several of these places. They tend to have electric music that is mostly country and old rock and roll cover bands but they are fun to listen to if you can hear over the whooping and hollering.
Another place where we have listened to live music is at a local farmers market. It is only open on Saturday mornings so we were surprised to find that there are live music acts playing there every week. We've spent a couple of Saturday mornings there, shopping for local organically grown produce, drinking microbiotically-enhanced fruit drinks and eating homemade tamales and empanadas while listening to pretty much the same kind of acts we see in coffee houses.
Finally, now that fall is here, one of our favorite places to hear live music is at halftime at local highschool football games. I guess it's not really free, because they charge $8 per ticket for highschool football games in our area, but we get to see a football game and listen to live music as well, all while drinking Dr. Pepper and eating Frito pie. It doesn't get any better than that.
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