K&W at Mission Viejo -- 13Jan07

What a night! First off, it was our first time at Mission Viejo since August, so that was kind of fun. I knew that Geneva's friend's gramma (a really sweet retired nurse), who drives her to the bus stop in the morning was planning to come see us. We've become good friends in 10-minute increments since school started, and I'd given her some CDs that she purports to like. She did show up, with 2 friends, but since that café is always jammed full of people treating it like a library, there was no place for them to sit.

But the real surprise was when a troop of 9 Trailmates dads and associated daughters marched in and lined up at the back (since there were no chairs). They were grinning and mugging at me, and I was pretty hard pressed to maintain the song I was in the middle of, but managed to keep it together. Of course, I was required (and happy) to play "Waltzing With Bears", with many of them singing quietly along. When that was done, it was "Picture time!"

The regular customers were perplexed and (hopefully) amused by all this, of course, so I explained the Indian Princess connection. Most of them seemed to think that that was pretty sweet, and it was over soon enough.

There was a 30-something married couple there when we got there, who were apparently just hanging out to hear the music. I don't know if they were specifically there for us, or just for whoever showed up, but when I passed out the song lists, the guy came up immediately and asked for James Taylor's "Something in the Way She Moves", pointing out that it was "their song". Fine with me, though I didn't expect I'd be able to play it as the first number, and held off until number 3. They stayed almost the whole night, and it was great to have some Real Live James Taylor fans.

Pretty much the worst singing I've done in at least a year, but not so bad that I needed to hang it up. It got a little better in the second half, so I could come closer to the notes I was aiming at. Fortunately, the worst seems to be over now, so I should be OK at Yorba Linda next Saturday. I hope saying that doesn't jinx it...

We had the usual problem of the Regular Club that hangs out at that Borders. They're a group of 40 and 50-year-olds, mostly single, who hang out in the café every night, apparently. Since they "own the place", they're reticent to give up the sonic space to the band. It's odd, because they profess to like our music, and to prefer it to most (all?) of the other bands that play there, but they just talk, joke, and laugh at full volume over the top of us -- and if I turn up the amp, they just shout louder. And they insist on taking all the "good seats", closest to us.

Of course they have a right to be there, but it's terribly distracting, and makes it hard for me to get through the songs, much less perform them well. Oh, well. Maybe it's a good thing that we don't get assigned there very often. The good part is that it's close to home, and more likely to be visited by my friends -- the bad part is that it's hard to play with all that racket.