The next Pleasant Note Coffee House Open Mic will be held Friday, March 9, at the First Universalist Church in Auburn. The evening begins at 7:30 p.m. For more information, go to www.uuauburn.org.

On a pleasant note:
Open Mic, which has welcomed poets, singers, guitarists and belly dancers, marks first anniversary at First Universalist Church

AUBURN – Last March, Toby Haber-Giasson started an experiment.

Cafe Bon-Bon had just closed, and its young, but popular open mic night went dark. Local poets and musicians suddenly had no informal place to share their work, play with new art forms or test out material on a forgiving audience.

Haber-Giasson, a singer and open mic devotee, couldn’t stand the silence.

So with her husband and a small band of open mic night refugees, she decided – enthusiastically – to try running an open mic night of her own at the First Universalist Church in Auburn .

“We said ‘Hey, we’ll put on a show!'” she said.

On March 9, that experiment celebrates its first anniversary.

“The best part is you never know what’s going to happen,” Haber-Giasson said. “You look at the sign-up list, you think you know what you’ve got. Then you’re just blown away.”

When Haber-Giasson began looking for a place to hold a monthly open mic night, the Unitarian Universalist church seemed perfect. It had a good location. It had an open space.

It had a history of open mic nights.

In 1989, Auburn musician Marc Jalbert started The Pleasant Note, monthly coffeehouse-style events for local performers. That morphed into a series of folk concerts.

Those events dissolved years ago. But Haber-Giasson knew the history and thought a new performing arts night would work.

Last March, the Pleasant Note Coffee House Open Mic Night was born. It didn’t take long before 50 then 75 then 100 people showed up.

Some performers wanted a place to play with their art or test out new material. Others wanted a small, safe place to get over stage fright, an audience willing to overlook a wrong key or bad writing or a silly act.

“People really feel safe and welcomed and appreciated and part of the community while they’re there,” Haber-Giasson said.

The open mic nights have seen children on the piano, adult belly dancers, student guitarists. Poet Pearl Sawyer, 85, has been going to open mic night since last May.

“You don’t get fan mail as a poet. But she can be a rock star when she comes to open mic night,” Haber-Giasson said.

Sawyer recently dedicated one of her self-published books to the group.

“It felt like a comfortable, familiar place,” she said. “It’s nice to see a place for people to try out their stuff and age doesn’t matter.”

Since the Pleasant Note nights started last year, Cafe Bon-Bon re-opened and re-started its own open mic events. But the duel events haven’t hurt Pleasant Note or Cafe Bon-Bon.

Some performers go to both.

“We just kind of switch off,” said Jessy Kendall, 30, a New Beginnings teen shelter employee by day and a drummer by night. “I have a strong like for creating.”