Original music at EFB

 THERE'S AN EVENT Sunday at Electric Fountain Brewing called the Original Music Series. It starts at 12:30 p.m. and features Travis Hoffman, Steve Rees, Logan Kammerer and Abigail Robison. It's acoustic and each person will perform original songs. The event is free and EFB has great coffee and drinks.

Phil Carlson organized the first one last month and it was a big hit. His goal is to do it monthly and have a few experienced players in the lineup, but he really wants an opportunity for artists who normally don't play out in public, or just don't have a lot of experience. He's also stressing the original music theme, because there aren't many places to play your own songs in Quincy.

Logan and Steve are amazing players and singers, and they will sound great it as usual. Travis used to play all the time and has recently gotten back into it. Poor Travis - he's filling in with our Pepper Spray jam band Saturday morning for the QHS Color Run at the high school, and hopefully he's not too scarred for Sunday.

Abigail is a junior at Quincy High School. She has taken guitar lessons from me for a long time. I've always encouraged her to play and sing her own songs, but until a few months ago I'd never heard her sing.

She came into her lesson and said she had to try out for the New Faces talent show at QHS. When asked what she was going to do, she said it was an original song. Aha! 

"Well, you'll have to play it and sing it now to see if it's any good," I said. 

I knew it would be good. But when she started singing, I almost fell off my chair and I actually teared up. Geesh. Somebody get this girl some gigs! I hired her on the spot to play at QFest this summer.

She played the song at all three nights of New Faces and did a great job. Now she's going to play more of her own tunes. I'm sure she'll be nervous, but it doesn't matter - she just needs to get up and do it, and learn how to play in front of people, which isn't easy.

Abigail will be awesome, like the other three. I encourage you to attend and support live and original music in Quincy. And thank you Phil for putting this together, and to Ryan Christian at EFB for hosting.