Maureen Muldoon of Voice Box Stories will invite you to present live on stage at the monthly storytelling series she co-hosts with Cathy Richardson if you can pitch a story molded to the theme of a designated song. If you get the gig and go on to present, Cathy will climb the stage after you and improvise a musical response to the story you just told. The first time, after I told a story about writing and rejection, Cathy came up to sing after me “Paperback Writer” by the Beatles. Whatever she comes up with, it’s always a kick in the pants.
When the theme song was “Let the Good TImes Roll” by the Cars, it took me an embarrassing number of hours to think of a story I might tell based on that theme.
How embarrassing? I’m a hardcore bike rider, have raced bikes in velodromes over ten years, have completed any number of “century” rides, gone on many multi-day “credit card camping” bike tours most of them solo, a few for charity, all of them adventures.
How was it possible that I couldn’t have a story to tell on the theme of letting the good times roll? Isn’t that exactly what I’ve been doing for decades?
And I had a story to tell about a good deed gone bad for a worthy and inspired cause, West Town Bikes – Youth on Bikes.
This is what I came up with. I hope you like it. The full tale is told here at biketoenddivison.org.
Cathy and Maureen, as the co-conspirators behind Voice Box, a storyteller’s series which combines an intoxicating mix of “live” story-telling and music, have been “putting themselves out there” for ten years! Kudos to them.