Geneva's Debut - RSM 23Jul05

Well, I finally got Geneva to come out and play and sing with me at the Borders gig. We worked up 4 "singing songs", and 4 or 5 fiddle tunes. She did really, really well. Better yet, she says she wasn't (and she didn't seem) nervous at all, and afterwards she said that "she hadn't realized how much *fun* it was gonna be!" My greatest fear was that she'd blow it big time, and/or be so stressed-wracked that she'd never want to do it again, but I guess we dodged both of those bullets.

It helped (a lot) that my mom and dad came down (with some friends) -- it's always nice to have some friendly faces in the crowd (and who's friendlier than a gramma?). Not that there was a "crowd" -- RSM was having one of their Summer Concerts that night, so the attendance at Borders was kinda light. I don't think there was any actual competition for audience, but I think that the local families that tend to go out on a Saturday night ended up at the concert, not the bookstore.

She sang "Soak Up the Sun", "Jenny Dreamed of Trains", "Lollipop Tree", and Tracy Ullman's 1979 pop hit "They Don't Know", which was probably the best of the lot. I sing harmony with her, a third up but an octave down, and it sounds pretty good, I think. It reinforces her sound -- and her courage, I'm pretty sure...

The fiddle tunes went OK, too, though we both need to work on the transitions and trying to remember how many A parts, and how many Bs. I'm not sure which one of us messed that up, but it was recover-able.

My dad took video of most of the night and my mom called yesterday to say that it turned out really well, so I'll be anxious to see (and hear) that. I'll try to snag some stills out of it, too -- I forgot to bring a camera.

I guess Geneva's other favorite part is that in order to incentive-ize her to get some songs together at all, I had promised her that she could have all the tips. We sold 6 CDs, and with some too-generous donations from my mom and her friend, Geneva made $47 towards her "iPod Fund"! That's a bit anomalous, of course, but it is a record "take", ever, for a coffeeshop gig. I reckon she'll want to do it again -- next chance at RSM (I don't think I want to take her to any of the not-so-friendly places for a while at least) is August 12. I hope to work up some more tunes by then, too ("Red Rubber Ball" to start). Now that she knows how much fun it is, maybe she'll be more willing to rehearse with me, and practice on her own.

Singing in the Car, Again

Since I've been sick, and I've got a gig coming up this Saturday, I've been trying to sing in the car a lot to get my voice back into shape -- or at least to see if I'm gonna be *able* to sing on Saturday.

I was singing along to the "Waltzing with Bears" CD, and then I got out the regular "Keith & Warren" CD, since those are, obviously, songs that I need to do, and that are in the right range for me.  I sang with that one for a day, but "that guy on the CD" is too loud, and I can't really hear if I'm singing OK or not.

Then it occurred to me that I have the original, separate tracks that make up those songs: my voice, my guitar, and Warren's guitar, all in separate files.  So I burned a CD last night of just the "my guitar" tracks, and now I have "K&W Karaoke!" in the car.  (I could have (should have) included Warren's guitar, especially for the solo verses, but that would have involved doing a mix-down, and I just didn't have time.)

Anyway, I thought it was clever, and it's definitely fun!

Email versus Blog

Hi everybody.  This email message came from the Y7alanzo blog-message forwarding system.  This has turned out to be trickier than it should have been, possibly because they don't really expect you to email your blog messages to a list of people.

Anyway, the formatting of the blog and the formatting of the email version of the messages don't really jibe.  I figured out a work-around, so and I think the words part will be reasonably clean, but the email version doesn't get the pictures.  Most posts don't have pictures, so that's OK, but if you see a blank square in an email, you'll know that there's supposed to be a picture.  You can click on the "y7alanzo" link at the bottom of the message, and you'll go to the actual blog page with that message, and you'll be able to see the picture there.

See you soon.

Comic-Con 2005

We made our annual pilgrimage to the San Diego Comic-Con yesterday. Geneva and I have been going as a father-daughter thing for the past four or five years, but this year Daleen and Acacia decided to tag along and see what it's all about.

Unfortunately, it seemed like a pretty sedate Con this year -- not sure why, exactly. None of us actually read any comic books of course, but there's always plenty of just "pop culture" stuff that we do like to see, and of course the Geek Show is always amusing. There were plenty of costumes, as usual, but it seemed like there was less movie excitement than in years past. Maybe 'cuz "Lord of the Rings" is all done.

We did like all the "Corpse Bride" stuff, and we saw a presentation about "Narnia" which was overlong, but kinda cool. Our "Creator of Kim Possible" friend, Chris Bailey, who draws us up a souvenir every year, couldn't make it this time but we found his booth and told his friend to say hi for Geneva, so that'll have to do.

Acacia's not as voracious and omnivorous a consumer of all things pop as Geneva is, so she found it mostly boring and too long a walk, so I guess Geneva and I will be solo again next year.

K&W - Yorba Linda 01Jul05

We played at Yorba Linda last night. It's the first Borders we've played that's undergone its Seattle's Best conversion. Although there's some confusion about whether or not we still get our paltry One Free Drink, it's pretty nice, and it especially worked out for us because they divided off a living-room-sized section of the (formerly too) large space by carpeting it, and setting Big Comfy Chairs around it. The effect was to make a Special Place for the band (us), with an obvious, designated Listening Area around it.

There happened to be some friendly, interested people, even before we started, and they actually sat in the Listening Area, and, surprise!, listened. And even as people got up and left, other people would come in and take their place -- even knowing what they were getting into! Almost as important -- the people who weren't in the Area (just by knowing that there was such a thing), were aware that there was a Concert going on. This makes a huge difference in how it goes for us, which is, mainly, based on how much Appreciation we get/feel. If the crowd gets the idea that we're just background Muzak, they talk, fail to applaud, and generally ignore us. If they get the impression it's a Concert, they still talk to each other, but quieter, with a little sensitivity. I mean, I don't like to seem selfish, but if I want to play for nobody, I can do it at home.

Anyway, I sang way better than could have been expected, considering the walking pneumonia, but I managed to get through the songs before needing to cough. (And, I brought the regular hand-held mic on a stand, instead of the head-mic, so I would be able to turn away from it before coughing.)

Since it went so well, I'm considering adding it to my list of places I'll do as a solo (which, so far, is just RSM). RSM appears to be popular, and tends to be booked pretty solid, but Yorba LInda usually has a lot of openings in the schedule. If it's gonna be warm and friendly, I may be able to fill some holes in my schedule by volunteering for spots out there.

Also noteworthy, though, is that the latest schedule shows Mission Viejo booked on Fridays and Saturdays -- it used to only do Fridays for some reason. I bumped the manager about that -- I wonder if bringing it to her attention made her go fix it. Anyway, MV always had that "too big" feel like Yorba Linda, but if they did a similar thing to it, it might become a Nice Place To Play, too. Could be a great prospect, especially with the doubling of the available dates, and not being such a drive as Yorba Linda.

Lame Movies

We watched "Temple of Doom" the other night, 'cuz we're working our way through the DVD set, and it wasn't as bad as I remembered it, probably because I wasn't stuck in a movie theater, forced to watch the lame "Ooh, isn't this gross" scenes.

It occurred to me that the degree to which Spielberg/Lucas movies are reviled matches the degree to which they decided to pander to 8-year-olds. The 8-year-old gross-out scenes in "Temple of Doom", and the 8-year-old fantasy-fulfillment "flying a spaceship and accidentally winning the battle" scene in "Episode 1", (not to mention Jar-Jar), might be fun for, say, an 8-year-old, but us adults are just insulted.

(I read somewhere that Lucas said that the first three movies are aimed at audiences that match the age of Anakin in each one. I don't know if that's true, or he made it up to cover himself after the negative reaction to "Episode 1", and it made a handy excuse. He is, after all, the King of the Ret-Con.)

These guys need to remember that their main audience is adults who want a bit of child-like fun, not actual children.

Borders Blurb

Gee, this was nice of them to say. Even though the guy who writes this stuff can't be bothered to come out and actually hear any of the acts...