An Evening At Ruby's
It’s a school night. Rockingham county high school students scram to finish homework while 17-year-old Morgan Dean walks into a bar.
She opens the door to the basement tucked beneath restaurant and show venue Clementine, known as Ruby’s.
A man approaches her and asks, “You playing tonight?” He presents to her a clipboard. She smiles at him and signs her name on a line. She drapes her East Rock High School lanyard around her neck and places her guitar case behind a set of microphones.
Thirty minutes pass as the clipboard circulates throughout local residents in the bar. Names of poetry readers, musicians, high school students, college students, adults with children are taken down. The mellow bar scene shifts into a fusion of multifaceted artists. Ruby’s Open Mic Night takes over.
At the turn of 9:10 p.m. the strum of the guitar echoes throughout the basement. The sound bounces off walls that are covered in black and white photos of JMU students raising awareness for landmine danger in the Middle East.
“Please welcome the threepeat offender of open mic night, Morgan Dean!” bellows host and musician Jeff Gorman.
Morgan steps onto the stage as sound technician Gordon Davies of local recording studio Blue Sprocket Sound approaches her. “Hi, Morgan, how are you?” he asks as he checks the sound levels on his IPad. Not only does he prepare her for live sound, but he prepares to record her as well. Gordon will take the live recording back to Blue Sprocket Sound, the sponsor of Ruby’s Open Mic, master it, and send it back to her for her to own and put out for others to hear. He does this with any musician who plays Open Mic.
Morgan looks over the microphone to a crowd of now 50 people in the bar with the hope that one day she’ll look over the microphones to see a large audience filling the Jefferson Theater in Charlottesville. She’s not nervous because she only gets nervous when her name is printed on big posters for concerts.
She strums her guitar. She belts “Hello” by Adele, and reminds herself that she graduates from high school in May to further her music career.
Bill Markunas, a local Harrisonburg resident, sits across from the stage. “Man, she can belt it out!” he shouts over the music.
Bill, dressed in workout spandex, ran to Ruby’s just in time to see the first opening acts. Every Wednesday he bikes, then swims, and then runs the rest of his workout to the bar. Triathlon training is a priority, but Open Mic is worth a faster-paced run.
After playing an original song, Morgan plays “Stars” by Grace Potter where there is a sudden dissonance. She stops playing. “It’s okay, it’s okay. I kind of had a brainfart but we’re going to get right back into it,” she recovers and the crowd cheers for her.
Manager Jody Dodson watches from the tables, content with the talent surging through the sound system. Morgan steps off the stage and the night continues with acts of folk music, poetry reading, acapella acts, and songs played with backtracks.
An older man with a banjo adjusts the microphone. “The banjo is a little cold tonight. Are we in Canada?” jokes Doug Pitts as he tunes his cold stringed companion. Doug is familiar with the microphone as he frequently plays at local venues in Harrisonburg with his band Dr. How and the Reasons to Live.
Beyond his microphone, groups of college students sit around tables guzzling down beers, laughing with each other. Lone bar-goers sit with beers and train their eyes and ears on the musician. Couples sit across from one another, lost in each other’s eyes, oblivious to the live music next to them.
The microphone is soon seized by Chris Howdyshell, a man well known in the Harrisonburg music scene. He looks at Bill M. who is still sitting across from the stage. “It’s Wednesday, you should be in bed! Don’t go to sleep, we aren’t that old!” he shoots through the microphone. Bill chuckles in return.
Chris launches into a chorus that quickly shifts into a rant about the absurdity of buying expensive furniture as an adult. “I need a bed. How much for a bed? $1000 for a bed! That’s how you know you’re getting old!” he booms through the sound system.
Chris plays a chorus, then rants, plays a chorus, then rants, and repeats this routine until he finishes covering topics like politics, insurance, and journalism.
“Can I do one more song if I promise not to rant?” he asks with a smile. Strangers to Open Mic look around uneasily, but the veterans chuckle and shout for him to play again.
Bill Howard takes over the microphone at 11:20 p.m. Like Doug, he is a good friend of the microphone. The crowd recognizes him from the prominent Harrisonburg band The Judy Chops.
As he sings songs about growing up in the Bible Belt and living in a college town, members of other well known Harrisonburg bands jam along with musicians who signed up to play. They chat, joke, and hold deep discussion with each other. At most shows in Harrisonburg concerts, one finds a mix of band members from all genres clapping along to their friends’ bands. A death metal fan will venture to a folk concert, and folk fans will travel to hip-hop shows. Strides in the music scene of Harrisonburg are made solely through hard work and friendship.
At 12:20 a.m. the last act steps onto stage as the bar continues to bustle with people. Tessa tucks her long, dark hair behind her ear as she steps behind her synthesizer with a guitar hanging over her shoulder.
She recently moved from Austin, TX to Harrisonburg and this is the first time she is playing without the rest of her band, Rikroshi. She’s played SXSW before, but her nerves tingle as she begins her first musical début at Clementine.
She plays a set of dreamy, dark pop songs. The mood of the bar becomes sleepier but the crowd turns heads as this genre is different from the folk heard before.
After her set, Jody approaches her, “I want to talk to you about playing at the Clementine main stage sometime.” Ruby’s Open Mic is the stepping stone to the main stages of Harrisonburg. And the main stages of Harrisonburg are the stepping stones to the larger musical world.
At 12:40 p.m. the artists and bar-goers converse with each before saying their final goodbyes.
“I’ll see you next week!” shouts Jeff Gorman to Chris Howdyshell. And in one week, the melting pot of artist will meet again to further build the foundation of the Harrisonburg music scene.