Open-mic nights are the place to be for original music

Wearing a flannel shirt and toting a guitar case, Nicholas Lopardo walked into the Amityville Music Hall on a recent Wednesday night and jotted his name on a list. The 37-year-old HVAC technician, who lives less than a mile away, was one of roughly a dozen musicians engaging in that age-old musical ritual, the open-mic night. After waiting 40 minutes or so, Lopardo walked on stage and played three original songs of fast-moving, acoustic pop-punk.

The applause was warm, if sparse, but Lopardo didn’t seem disappointed. “In my head,” he said with a smile, “this is Madison Square Garden.”

Yes, you can find original music on Long Island. Open-mic nights, long a subliminal presence on the local scene, have been quietly proliferating over the past year or so, popping up at bars and cafes and eateries. Amityville Music Hall started its weekly Wednesday night in October, around the same time that Swing the Teapot, a cafe in Floral Park, started its monthly edition. Mugs on Main, a cafe in Riverhead, launched a weekly Thursday open mic in January. Several hosts and performers say there’s enough demand that they’re trying to start new ones.

“You know how they say if you add another lane on the L.I.E., they’ll come?” says Joe Bouza, who runs his Creation Dream open-mics at three venues and hosts a monthly virtual session from his home in Huntington. “The open-mic family of people just love coming out and playing.”

Open mic resurgence

Chalk it up to a population eager for live entertainment after the dark years of the COVID-19 pandemic, says Mike Meehan, a Riverhead-based restaurateur who launched the open-mic nights at Amityville Music Hall and Mugs on Main. When Meehan first ventured onto the scene as a performer a few years ago, he recalls, he was “surprised” at how many open-mics he found. “It seems to be a resurgence," he says.

The nights also provide an alternative to the usual cover bands that dominate local bars, says Mike Barry, 70, a full-time musician who runs the open-mic at Swing the Teapot. Music fans “want to believe that somebody right in their neighborhood is capable of accomplishing something original,” he says. “The whole thing is to try to develop an audience for that music.”

Open-mics might be almost as old as the microphone itself, but they truly flourished in the Greenwich Village folk scene of the 1960s. The singer-songwriter vibe faded during the new-wave '80s, then enjoyed a brief comeback in the '90s after the grunge band Nirvana released its stripped-down “Unplugged” album. These days, hip-hop, pop and country are on the rise, and while you might hear those genres at an open mic, the vibe generally leans folksy.”.

In terms of the crowds, “The large majority of it is over-40,” acknowledges Debra Lynne Viniar, 68, a home organizer in North Massapequa and frequent open-mic performer who plans to begin hosting her own night at a local restaurant. Like many organizers, Viniar says she’d love to see younger musicians find their way to the scene. “There’s Ed Sheeran and the more indie-folkie kind of music — that’s coming back,” she adds hopefully.

The Amityville Music Hall is also trying to court younger musicians. Its open-mic night is billed as Open Stage, because the venue can accommodate a full band. Only a handful of those have played there so far, Meehan says, but he’s hoping word-of-mouth and the arrival of summer will bring out more. “You’ve got to build these things, right?” he says.

Creating a vision

Toby Tobias, who runs the widely known Northshore Original Open-Mic — dubbed NOOM — at Huntington’s Cinema Arts Centre, says he welcomes all-new open mics but warns that managing one isn’t easy. “You have to have a vision for how you want this to work,” he says. At NOOM, musicians are allowed to express themselves freely — even if politics creep into the songs — but talking during performances is forbidden. SOOM regularly draws audiences of 40 to 60 each night, he estimates.

“I’ve kind of figured out the secret sauce of keeping this community together,” Tobias, 66, says. “People see that I’m authentic, and the people who come are authentic.”

At the Amityville Music Hall, singer-guitarist Juan Rosado says open-mics have helped him rekindle his love of music. Retired after a career with the New York Housing Authority, Rosado, 66, says he recently picked up his guitar again and started playing in front of crowds for the first time since he was in his 20s.

“It gets you to get up on stage, it builds confidence, you feel better,” Rosado says. “I’m very happy that this is here, and I hope it goes on forever and ever, for the future musicians.”

By Rafer Guzmán

rafer.guzman@newsday.com