July 3, Open Mic Night featuring Finn O'Sullivan

Join Us at Velvet Elk Lounge for Downtown First Friday Art Walk Open Mic Night! 

Pull up a seat, tune up, and share something real. Open Mic Night at the Velvet Elk is the coziest little corner of Boulder to try out that song you've been sitting on, read a poem, or just see what happens when you say yes to the mic.

All voices welcome. All skill levels welcome. 

Finn O'Sullivan got her start performing Taylor Swift concerts in her bedroom while her parents were out. She grew up in a small house with sparkly lights and solstice parties and full moon walks and go-to-sleep guitar serenades and left of center everything. And music was at the heart of all of it. She played piano early and she sang songs in the bathtub and she picked up a guitar when she was twelve and, as Taylor Swift herself once said, "just like clockwork, the dominoes cascaded in a line."

O'Sullivan says that songwriting is a way for her to express herself and talk about things that are important to her, which is sometimes hard for her to do in everyday conversation. She is "committed to creating things that other people can relate to," and her songs are a testament to this commitment. She explores love and heartbreak, patriarchal privilege, the worlds of her favorite fictional characters, and the endless what if's that keep her up at night. 

Lyrics are often where a song begins for O'Sullivan. "When I write a song," she says, "it's not based on a melodic idea or a chord progression, but on a concept, a lyrical idea." Her lyrics range from old soul, to millennial quirky, to fresh and bold, and her clever, catchy, and sometimes melancholy tunes simply get stuck in your head.

O'Sullivan coined herself "incredibly unfamous" based on a pinback button she found at a second hand store. Her song of the same name realizes that remaining incredibly unfamous is not the worst thing that could happen. For her, the phrase is primarily about staying true to self amidst pressures to fit someone else's idea of what it means to be successful in a daunting and challenging industry. Still, though the phrase is relevant, it is also, hopefully, eventually, wrong.