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General Discussion / Re: When Did You 'Fall In Love' With Spoken Word/Slam
« on: September 17, 2007, 01:43:07 PM »
Rustbelt 2007- that's right, real recently.
I started flirting with slam back in 01 here in MN, Thadra Sheridan ( I loved the piece she did that night by the way) saw me do a reading of some Lydia Lunch-esque stuff (for lack of a better mildly insulting word) .She invited me to the slam and I started going. I had a few pieces I'd do but I was big into Improv at the time and there were schedule conflicts.
Nats was here in 02 but I didn't get to see a lot of it because I worked nights at a pub in South Minneapolis and was so broke at the time I couldn't afford to miss work.
Then in 2006 I got more into it actually competing enough to make the semi-finals here; I BOMBED hard fisrt round and then my acting career got a nice kick in the ass shoortly after. This made me realize I wanted to perform more and even make a living doing so (which I do now for the most part). I took over Kieran's open mic one night invited everyone I knew And packed the house and got asked to stay on as co-host and then ended up taking the whole thing on solo. I had done a nice job of increasing attendance at the open mic and when Cynthia French was looking for someone to take over the slams she approached me ( and others including co-SM Allison) and Asked if I was interested. The show that was making me good money at the time was a about to end And I enjoyed running the open mic and helll I was at most slams anyway. So I said yes.
Then this past year I did our W&YI bouts (in LaX vs Milwaukee & in Des Moines vs Licoln and Omaha), the Amnesty International Slam in Milwaukee (where I was way out of my league) and those were sort of my courtship period. Then Came the Slammasters meeting in Madison. I had met Ed Mabrey( who organized the last RB) at the Amnesty Slam and knew he was running rustbelt this year. My Slam wasn't going to have the money to send a team to Rustbelt but I figured I could afford to ditch out on work for a few days and go see some kick ass poetry. So I bought a greyhound ticket (this drunk guy fell asleep on me) and went down to host some bouts.
It was fuckin' beautiful.
Amazing poets, amazing people, All these words blowin' my mind.
I realized that this was a community that I wanted and maybe even needed to be a part of.
Nats just furthered that bond. Oh the hippie love crap that has ensued.
So yeah Rust Belt 07
I started flirting with slam back in 01 here in MN, Thadra Sheridan ( I loved the piece she did that night by the way) saw me do a reading of some Lydia Lunch-esque stuff (for lack of a better mildly insulting word) .She invited me to the slam and I started going. I had a few pieces I'd do but I was big into Improv at the time and there were schedule conflicts.
Nats was here in 02 but I didn't get to see a lot of it because I worked nights at a pub in South Minneapolis and was so broke at the time I couldn't afford to miss work.
Then in 2006 I got more into it actually competing enough to make the semi-finals here; I BOMBED hard fisrt round and then my acting career got a nice kick in the ass shoortly after. This made me realize I wanted to perform more and even make a living doing so (which I do now for the most part). I took over Kieran's open mic one night invited everyone I knew And packed the house and got asked to stay on as co-host and then ended up taking the whole thing on solo. I had done a nice job of increasing attendance at the open mic and when Cynthia French was looking for someone to take over the slams she approached me ( and others including co-SM Allison) and Asked if I was interested. The show that was making me good money at the time was a about to end And I enjoyed running the open mic and helll I was at most slams anyway. So I said yes.
Then this past year I did our W&YI bouts (in LaX vs Milwaukee & in Des Moines vs Licoln and Omaha), the Amnesty International Slam in Milwaukee (where I was way out of my league) and those were sort of my courtship period. Then Came the Slammasters meeting in Madison. I had met Ed Mabrey( who organized the last RB) at the Amnesty Slam and knew he was running rustbelt this year. My Slam wasn't going to have the money to send a team to Rustbelt but I figured I could afford to ditch out on work for a few days and go see some kick ass poetry. So I bought a greyhound ticket (this drunk guy fell asleep on me) and went down to host some bouts.
It was fuckin' beautiful.
Amazing poets, amazing people, All these words blowin' my mind.
I realized that this was a community that I wanted and maybe even needed to be a part of.
Nats just furthered that bond. Oh the hippie love crap that has ensued.
So yeah Rust Belt 07
See you in Austin!