The power outage that impacted much of Kenyon’s campus on Friday night could not stop the music and electric energy of the Horn Gallery’s first open mic of the semester. Approximately 14 minutes after the outage occurred, Horn co-Managers Liv Stripling ’26 and Ivy Tollefsen ’28 sent an all-student email with the subject line “We have POWER @ open mic TONIGHT,” reassuring all interested parties that the much-anticipated event would still be taking place. An hour after campus lost power, the Horn Gallery welcomed the first of 13 performers to the delight of a vocal and enthusiastic audience.

Taking to the stage with his electric guitar, Austin Vaughan ’26 kicked off both the event and the semester with a rousing start. Vaughan’s rendition of “House of the Rising Sun,” no doubt inspired by the Animals’ version, absolutely filled the space as he belted into the mic with the confidence of a seasoned performer. The moody-but-driving chords were matched by the yearning timbre of his voice as he sang “Momma was a tailor / She sewed my new blue jeans / My father was a gambling man” before lowering his now-velvety voice, as though letting the audience in on the terrible secret “Way down in New Orleans.” 

Finn McWhirter ’26 and Ytamar Solomon ’29 also chose a narrative-driven song with their performance of “I’ll be here in the Morning” by Townes Van Zandt, though not before imparting some humorous remarks about how the duo came to be. As McWhirter described it, one day he said to Solomon, “Hey man, we should start a band,” and that was that. Despite a brief false start, which if anything the audience found endearing, the duo, with McWhirter singing and Solomon on keys, proved themselves a success. The crooning of “Close your eyes, / I’ll be here for a while” felt like a promise, and it seemed that their performance was over all too soon.

Later in the evening, Stripling sang the first original song of the night, which she titled “Receive.” Before she began, she explained, “I wrote [it] like four days ago. It’s about my life or whatever.” Then, as she began playing her guitar, the Horn became enveloped in the slowness and warmth. With no rush in the world, and between strumming and humming, she sang “the growing thing / to receive / so slow down I’ll be around.” In her time on stage, the music as much as the building felt like a refuge from the cold, as some audience members stood swaying in the back and others sat listening closely. 

In perhaps the most moving performance of the evening, Aidan Puntes ’26 sang another original song. His song, titled “Weather Systems,” compared a relationship and its changing tides to various shifts in the weather. The lyrics were poignant and precise, as one verse began, “Couldn’t let you in / If you wanna see / Why don’t you just tell me” before Puntes went on, rhyming, “I can’t feel you there / In an uninviting air.” Puntes’ voice also complemented his writing as he dragged out the final note of “air” and with just the right amount of rasp and pull.

Despite, or perhaps because of, the chaos of the power outage, the Horn open mic and each of its performances created a sense of authenticity (due in no small part to the ongoing speaker feedback issues) and community during an otherwise dark night on campus.