The open mic is the last democratic stage in the music industry. You sign your name on a piece of paper and you get five minutes. Nobody asks for your resume. Nobody asks for your follower count. Nobody asks if you have a manager. You get five minutes and a microphone and whatever happens in those five minutes is the audition.

I played my first open mic in 1965. A coffeehouse on MacDougal Street. I played three chords and sang about marijuana and half the room left. The other half stayed. That was the first time I learned that the right audience is never the whole audience. The right audience is the half that does not leave.

Every famous musician you have ever heard of played an open mic before they were famous. Bob Dylan played open mics on MacDougal Street before he was Bob Dylan. He was just a kid from Minnesota with a harmonica and a voice that sounded like a screen door. The open mic did not care where he was from. The open mic does not care where anybody is from. The open mic only cares if you show up and if you play.

The open mic has one rule. You get five minutes. Not six. Not ten. Five. That limit is the best teacher in the music industry. Five minutes teaches you to cut the fat. Five minutes teaches you that the intro is too long. Five minutes teaches you that the second verse is not as good as the first verse and you should probably skip it. The open mic taught me more about songwriting than any record label ever did.

Here is the secret about the open mic. The open mic is not about the performer. The open mic is about the room. Twenty strangers sitting in a room listening to twenty other strangers play music they have never heard before. That is not entertainment. That is communion. The performer gets five minutes. The room gets the whole night. I have been dead for nine years and I am still at the open mic. The sign-up sheet just got longer.

See also: The Landlord — the calculator who controls the room. The First Chord — the chord that started everything. The Audience — the stranger who stops walking. The Encore — nine years into the longest encore in rock and roll.