Friends and passersby were mildly impressed during open mic night at a local bar last evening when they discovered that area man Leonard Hasslebeck’s stutter all but vanishes when he starts to sing. And he’s got, you know, a pretty good voice. Nothing amazing. Like, he’s not destined for stardom or anything, but he’s a pretty decent singer.
“I mean, really, who wants to go to an open mic night?” Hasslebeck’s longtime friend and former college roommate Matt O’Neil admitted. He then collected himself. “But to be honest, I’ve never actually heard him try to sing. Thought it might be something special considering his situation. And he didn’t suck; don’t get me wrong! But …” O’Neil trailed off.
O’Neil, who is also Hasslebeck’s coworker at a data entry firm, was responsible for dragging other acquaintances and colleagues to the bar to watch Hasslebeck’s middling performance of Edwin McCain’s “I’ll Be.”
“At the office, nobody really talks to each other, so when we heard Leonard struggle through his announcement that he was going to do open mic at the bar, some of us just kind of felt like we had to,” coworker Liz Handel explained.
She continued: “And then when Matt put it in the company Slack, I guess a decent amount of us were like, ‘Okay, we’re going to this thing.’”
Another coworker, Ben Leland, then chimed in, “It was fine, but we totally could’ve stayed at home.”
One stranger who spoke anonymously, having a drink by herself, opined, “I mean, yeah, his performance was good, but if he didn’t have a little prelude before he started singing, let’s just say his applause would’ve been more tepid.”
She then started walking away before frantically adding, “Good for him, though!”
When asked what he thought of his own performance, Hasslebeck said, “Eh, not … not bad!”