Keith plays an Art Show -- 18May2008

Well, that was completely different. A lady who saw me play at the Costa Mesa Borders hired me to play her "Art Show", which really turned out to be a big patio party for all her friends and family. The place was a "décor" shop in Long Beach, which sells mostly home trinkets: wind chimes, sun catchers, pewter gee-gaws -- built out of an old bungalow. Laura had 10 or 12 of her paintings up in the various rooms, and set me up on the "patio" which was really the one-car driveway that used to let the car get from the street to the backyard garage.

That put me in the middle of a long narrow space, between the block wall and the house, which made for a pretty loud, echo-ey space. Laura specifically told me that I should play loud -- she wanted people in the house to be able to hear me, and come out to find the party. So, I cranked up pretty loud (for me), and played -- at first to nearly nobody, but people arrived, and only a few left, so it got pretty crowded after a while. There was lots of food, and sangria and wine, and it got to be a full-on party.

Nobody was really paying attention to me, so I just played -- even though it was really loud in there. People were standing right in front of the speakers, shouting their conversations, but they didn't seem to resent me for it. I figured that if I were a boombox, I wouldn't "care" that I was being obnoxious, so I just kept playing, party-style: loud music, shouting people.

But since nobody was paying attention, I didn't do any talking between songs, and nobody was asking for requests, either. This meant that I played almost the whole time, with hardly any time between songs. I even strung the with-capo songs together (since it didn't matter which songs I played when), and that kept the pauses for tuning down.

Which all meant that I played almost solid for the 3 hours she had me booked for, and, since the party wasn't really over at 7, a half hour more than that. I played almost every song in the book, and some of them twice. My fingers were just about dead, and my brain was starting to rebel too, towards the end -- I kind of felt bleary, like I'd just woken up or something, and was staring at the music and doing stuff nearly at random, in spite of what was right in front of me.

Anyway, Laura noticed that I was over-time and told me to quit. I had some of the food that was left, and she told me how perfect it was, and how all the guests loved the music, and she handed me an envelope. We had agreed on $250 for the gig, but when I opened it, there were 3 hundred-dollar bills in it.

It was pretty strange to play against such a wall of sound, but apparently it was "as expected" for the people there. I certainly prefer quieter places where I can tell what I'm doing, and people who actually listen, but for $300, I can make an exception.