Rockin the free world

I jumped into a last second open mic night session with my friend Lee at Ryan's Daughter out near Belvedere Square. I've played with Lee in front of people only once before, and that was over at the Waverly Farmer's market where it was more of a walk-by, I'm thinking more about getting a mushroom sandwich and a zucchini, audience. He's a pretty experienced singer-songwriter and has a few albums of work he's put together. I just sang back up the other day for his newest compilation. The woman before us played some covers, mostly rock stuff, so we thought we'd be able to surprise people with more of the bluegrassy and original stuff. I felt like it went over like Peter Paul and Mary opening for Dokken. Performing live, especially with the mandolin, feels about the same as trying to teach a group of 3rd graders on the verge of ruler fighting chaos. My head suddenly felt like it was in one of the 1950's fishbowl astronaut helmets. I could barely hear myself or even Lee. Playing alone, you get inside your instrument, floating over your music and the world around you. In front of people, you feel every fumble like a pebble in your shoe, bigger than it really is. Acting in a play in high school and college seemed less nerve wracking, because you were isolated by the blazing stage lights into a sort of tent, where you were only aware of the audience when there was the occasional laugh or other reaction (never got high-pitched screaming, unfortunately) but you forgot about the people otherwise. In a bar, it's all right there, tripping some nerves I forgot I had. Not exactly crossing the Amazon, but I was definitely kicking in a few survival features of the brain(cue Eye of the Tiger). I could only count on what I remembered without thinking. That's something I've known since 5th grade piano recitals, but it's still easy to forget.
At one point somebody screamed "Yeah, bluegrass!" and there was at least more than one person clapping after every song, so I made it. I was a little sweaty. I wanna do it again.
In the meantime, I tried the curry sauce topped french fries. Maybe people in Ireland grow up with that stuff, but it was new to me. It's a new winner in the fou-fou french fry category, with the rosemary-garlic pile at Brewer's Art and the green chile cheese fry bowl at Golden West. Maybe it's for a Baltimore French Fry festival? Good thing I'm going to back the land of cheese sauce, Chicagoland, Illinois, this weekend. I need to return to the simpler pleasures of orange cheese on pre-frozen fries. This East Coast life is making me a little too high-falootin.