I appreciate your critiques, but I don't hold them in that high of an honor (ha, ha). Sometime I agree with you and sometimes I don't. I like listening to "coherent" story songs, but I am not that big of a fan of writing them. If I get a good story song, great, if not -- it is not that big a deal to me. If you look at my favorite bands to listen to nowadays (Lumineers, Head and the Heart, Counting Crows,...), that is really the sound I would like to emulate. By the way, I keep trying to listen to country radio where you do expect the story to be king -- but it ain't happening there at all. Commerical country radio has hit its "in-between" phase, they are rolling out the retreads with really bad lyrics -- and it is very popular!!!
As for the open mic, if they don't want songs in their infancy then they shouldn't call it Open Mic! If someone crosses me off their list because of my open mic tunes, then they just saved themselves time and effort (ha, ha).
P.S. you are really obsessed with this BIAB thing. You always mention it even when I don't use it. You do realize that most studios use bass/drums samples to get a tune started? I even saw that way back when I did that group tour with the MABster.