Christmas Eve with Mike McAbee at the Elbow Room

Tuesday 24th December 2019
The Elbow Room, Stevens Point, WI

I was expecting the ususal Tuesday night songswap down at the Elbow Room, so this was a nice surprise. Mike's a local friend-of-friends who comes back from Iowa to see family for Xmas and so there's been a tradition of him playing a Christmas Eve show for the usual crowd of lovable misfits down at the Elbow. I hadn't seen him in action for a few years — he really is a great barroom entertainer, singing all the songs everyone knows (with witty/cynical/surreal commentary) and enjoying singing them, even if he doesn't like them, while randomly wandering around the venue with the freedom of his radio headmic and guitar pickup.

A young woman called Sheila was guesting on violin when I arrived (apparently she's playing with local stalwarts Irene's Garden these days). A friend of Mike's joined to sing harmony on "With Or Without You" (which Mike announces as being "With Or Without Yous" by "Yous2" when in Central Wisconsin, "With Or Without Y'all" by "Y'all2" in Texas). His son Abe rather touchingly joined him for a short a cappella Irish song before they downed shots of Jameson's together. He noticed I'd brought my saz and asked if I wanted to join, so we did a reasonably competent "All Along the Watchtower" (me playing into a vocal mic precariously balanced on a barstool).

"500 Miles", "Come On Eileen", "Boys Don't Cry", "What's Up?" etc. got everyone singing along. He was slipping the line "Jeffrey Epstein didn't kill himself" in wherever it would rhyme (e.g. covering Bob Seger a la "Take those old records off the shelf/ Jeffrey Epstein didn't kill himself". Seemingly an in-joke mocking rightwing conspiracy theorists>? But yeah, I think it's fair to conclude that Jeffrey Epstein didn't kill himself.

Later in the night I asked for "Fisherman's Blues" by The Waterboys (Mike's toured in Ireland and Scotland so that seemed a safe bet). He seemed to think I wanted to join in, so I did — bad idea... saz out of tune, nervous system under the influence of Point IPA — but in a noisy drunken Christmas Eve haze i don't think anyone noticed.