Musical performances were abound Saturday night; DIY Denizen Diana Clarke stepped up to cover a very unique one: the Greenborough’s Make-Your-Own-Instrument Open Mic. A combination of chaos and acoustic bliss ensued.

Anything can be an instrument!

The announcement promised “make-your-own-instrument,” but by the time I got to the second floor of Greenborough on Saturday night, it was all keyboards and banjos and guitars. “Wagon Wheel”—what else?—was playing, and the room was packed with people in knobby sweaters, arms flung around each other, swaying in the half-light.

Everyone settled closer to accommodate the latecomers, and Tracy Einstein took the front of the room, slapping and dinging a variety of half-filled bottles, from the Snapple variety to laundry detergent, while a collaborator beat an upside-down plastic trash bin with a pair of ballet slippers. Halfway through the set, they switched places.

Next, Elizabeth Kipp-Giusti, Adam Formica and Alex Louis, performing as “EKG and the KGBs” (a name assigned to them as they got onstage), soulfully wailed country acoustics. Kipp-Giusti later whipped out some Lana Del Ray with Charline Tetiyevsky, for a rendition of “Video Game,” read off of a smartphone and punctuated with cheek kisses.

Other highlights included Jake Snider’s original performances, including the premier of a new heart-wrencher with the sad refrain “I want to be in your mind more,” Josh Arky’s a capella German and Italian opera-singing, and a handmade speaker fashioned from a Poland Spring water jug, the use of which was immediately discontinued as the cry “I smell burning!” made its way through the crowd.

From there, things got much less orderly. Formica got back on the banjo, to much foot-stomping and knee-slapping. Before long, the event became a full-on hootenanny, the rug brushed aside, the uneaten hummus and baguette abandoned on a counter, sweat and string, and a ruckus that made the downstairs neighbor come up to check that the roof wasn’t caving in. A banana-trombone made its tootling way around the room, and though the open mic had no microphone, no one seemed bothered.

Refined hootenannying via Wikimedia Commons