K&W at Brea - 18Nov2006

I've never played Brea before, though Jim & Warren have, and Warren warned me that "there's no place to set up". That turned out to be very true, but we moved some roll-able displays out of the way and figured something out.

I played pretty well, considering the 3 weeks lay-off and lack of home practicing. My brain seemed somehow more lucid than usual, as if I'd had some kind of bandwidth upgrade -- stuff seemed to be easier than I remember, so I could handle it all without a lot of specific effort. Odd feeling, that.

Also, being away from the songs for a while has an odd effect: I remembered, well enough, how to play them, but wasn't remembering the exact things I usually do with the vocals, so I was free to (slightly) re-interpret them. Hard to explain, but, I think, good for my performance.

Unfortunately, we were mostly ignored, with light clapping between songs -- except for one young kid at the back that perked right up when we started, and was watching and listening pretty much all the way through to the end. I got the impression (proved right later), that he played guitar himself. He moved up closer in the last hour or so, and talked to us afterwards. Nice kid, and it's always a big help if at least one person is really listening.

Our best reaction all night was for "Homeward Bound". Didn't expect that. And, despite it being a bit early, I played my 6 most presentable Christmas songs. I'm really doing well with "River" these days, now that I can hit that long, high, note without so much strain, and I played "Please Come Home For Christmas" probably better than I ever have.

I had broken my ring-finger nail really short while unpacking the camping gear last Sunday, and it hasn't grown back enough to play guitar with yet. I've been in fear of this happening eventually, and it's come close before, but this was the first time it was completely un-playable. So, I went and bought some "press-on nails", which worked surprisingly well. I looked kinda (let's use the word) odd, I'm sure, with one shiny pearl-pink nail, which looked not-so-bad at home, but really picked up a shine in the well-lit store environment. But it played just fine, didn't feel "in the wrong place" to be unusable, and didn't break loose in the middle of a song. I tried to remember to keep my hand closed up in between songs, but I'm not sure how successfully I hid it. Still, it's good to know that there's a pretty simple solution if this happens again, and I'll know to at least knock the shine off with some sandpaper, next time.