Wine Me Up Jazz Jam
Open Mike’s, Melbourne, FL • September 27, 2013
Rose Petralia
Friday nights in Melbourne, Florida can be tricky, especially for those of us between the ages of Trinity Towers and Stone Middle School. But fear not, people, because to the rescue of our sleepy – but up-and-coming, mark my words – town comes Open Mike’s.
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Wine Me Up Jazz Jam is the Coffee, Lounge, and Live Music venue’s regular Friday open-mic event, and I suppose we could have just stumbled on an exceptionally good lineup, though given Melbourne’s surprising talented-musician saturation rate, I think any Friday is a good bet. The ensemble switched up throughout the evening, and featured a particularly cool cat who drove the show and the stand-up bass, a scorching guitarist who sat in for a few numbers, and a young saxophonist named Ian, who wails, by the way. The highlight, however, was vocalist Kristen Warren, who belted out “My Funny Valentine,” Louis Armstrong’s “Wonderful World,” and other standards with both power and exquisite control.
Not into jazz? It doesn’t matter. The atmosphere is cool, the drinks are great and reasonably priced, and nobody’s a dick – in fact, your friends are probably already there, chatting with Mike and Koah and Nathan. You don’t find all of that everywhere in Melbourne, but you can count on it at Mike’s, any day of the week.
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