I used to call “Have Yourself a Merry Little Christmas” the alcoholic’s Christmas carol because of the line about “next year all our troubles will be out of sight.” Pure denial, fantastical thinking. Wasn’t that mean of me? It’s a perfect song for this year and I regret my former attitude.  If you’re not busy on Christmas Eve at 3:00 PM Pacific Time, 6:00 PM East Coast, share a merry little winter holiday with us at Open Mike with Mute Button.

Open Mike with Mute Button is an ongoing Zoom event I created for the same reason I start so many things: to get people making music and not just listening to pre-recorded, slick studio productions. While wonderful to listen to, recordings often miss the point of music. Music is alive, and the melding of your beating heart and your breath with melody, harmony and rhythm is an incomparable event all in itself.

Open Mike with Mute Button began when I asked my college friend John who lives in Boston if he would be interested in joining me. John is a walking compendium of folk music. When I knew him at school, he was a banjo plunker. Now I find out he is somewhat of a virtuoso on banjo and guitar. That’s what 40 years of practice will do. With John’s agreement I secured the east coast and John came up with our name.

My student Susan recently moved from Seattle to Longmont, Colorado and she (the original spotlight whore) brought in two of her college friends, Linda and Beth, who all have sung together. Rocky Mountains were accounted for.

My cousin June in Wisconsin, a piano teacher and church musician, said she would join whenever she could. That pins down middle America.

The world’s seventh largest economy gave us Bruce in central California and Mary-Ellis in Berkeley, also college friends. (that would be Whitman College, Walla Walla, Washington.) Bruce sings children’s songs, German songs and songs from his Roman Catholic faith. Mary-Ellis, always wildly entertaining, sings musical comedy and standards.

In the Seattle area, besides me, early joiners were Stewart who plays what seems like every string instrument known to man and is long a song collector. My friend and Swedish teacher Karin brought some of the loveliest songs on earth (and often about the earth) from her native Sweden. Vicki, a beginning piano student and the bravest of us all, once played and sang a song from her first-year piano book. And Melinda with her ukulele and her smile makes you sing your heart out.

I know someone in Holland who stays up late and I keep hoping he will join us one day at  midnight for him. That would make Open Mike with Mute Button international.

We are in all stages of musical development: amateurs, professionals, terrified performers and spotlight whores. We take turns singing and playing for each other. There’s always a lot of laughing and I always come away inspired and with a few new songs to learn.

If you’re a musician who hasn’t been practicing because there’s no place to perform, please join us.

We love having an audience! You can mute yourself and sing along or just listen.

It’s a different kind of holiday for most of us. The original words to “Have Yourself a Merry Little Christmas” include this line:

Someday soon we all will be together if the fates allow
But til then we’ll have to muddle through somehow
So have yourself a merry little Christmas now.

We can do this!