An open mic night in a town of 400 people should not work. There are not enough people. That is just arithmetic. You need a pool of performers willing to get up in front of strangers, and a pool of strangers willing to sit and watch them, and Lake City does not really have either one — everybody in that room knows everybody else in that room, which is the opposite of the conditions an open mic is supposed to require.
It works anyway. It works better than it has any right to. Partly because of local talent and partly due to seasonal or incidental talent.
A few times each summer the letter board on the Lake City Arts building reads OPEN MIC. Lake City Arts is in the old brick building that went up in 1880 as an annex to the Hinsdale County Courthouse. It was built for public affairs during the mining boom, back when this town was still convinced it was going to be the metropolis of the San Juans. It was not. The building stayed anyway, doing county paperwork for most of a century, until volunteers started fixing it up in the nineties and putting art shows in it. Now it has a proper theater, the Mary Stigall, and a gallery in the front corner, and the Hinsdale County Museum is a block away. Silver Street is quietly doing the cultural heavy lifting for the entire county.
The format is exactly what it sounds like — you sign up at the door and you perform whatever you want. Music, comedy, poetry, a story. Somebody plays an acoustic guitar. Somebody reads something they wrote. The best thing about a small-town open mic is that the smallness is not the weakness. It is the whole point. Everybody participates, supports, and enjoys. It is a delight and has been a great way for our daughters to risk more than they normally would.
Open mic is not the only thing they run, and the summer calendar is better than it has any business being. There is an annual musical revue with performers going all out. Professional chamber music comes through in late July, and the musicians who play it also run a week-long violin intensive for students that ends with free public concerts anyone can walk into. There are art classes, kids’ programs, Art Walks on Silver Street when a new show opens in the gallery, and the Arts & Crafts Festival over in Town Park in mid-July, which has been running for close to fifty years. Check the calendar before you come. Dates move around year to year, so check your dates.
