I Finally Get To Play for/at Santa

For years, I've been trying to play my Christmas tunes for the lines of families waiting to talk to Santa Claus at the annual display that the city sets up. It's always been down at "Four Corners", and the line wound down a narrow sidewalk, so I brought my little portable amp and stood in the gutter, playing to only a small section of the line. Far from ideal.

And worse, a few years ago when I tried it, a clearly-former-military member of the MV Recreation Committee came over and asked me, "And who are you supposed to be?" I didn't really think I was in disguise, but I tried to explain that I was just trying to entertain the line a little, but he said that they already had music (a boom box with a Christmas record playing, up at the house itself, barely hear-able back where I was), and made it pretty clear that I wasn't welcome. I haven't tried since then.

But this year, they moved Santa's house to the plaza between City Hall and the Library, which is bigger, safer (no traffic), quieter, and nicer. And they put up a stage next to the house for "local performers". Unfortunately, this was a last-minute idea, so the info about how to go about becoming one of those performers was hard to come by.

But we went down for the big to-do on Santa's first night, and there were little-kid dance studios, and a *terrible* local band of high school kids (when we got there, the two guitar players were theoretically playing "Winter Wonderland", but the chords didn't fit the tune, and the girl singer, not being able to tell what was going on, was singing in some random different key. Ouch.), and a poster with the phone number of who to call.

So I did, and got booked for last Wednesday, but the rain came and canceled that. I asked the coordinator if maybe the Sunday act wasn't planning to use the whole time, and she set me up for the violin player's "break from 5-6. That'll be tricky, 'cuz it takes me 20 minutes to set up, and another 20 to tear down, so I don't know how I'll work that.

But then, a while ago, she emailed me asking if I'd like to play on Saturday mid-day, when they have the annual "Dogs on Santa's lap" picture-taking event. I reckon there'll be a line of people waiting for that, same as when it's the kids' turn, so I'm in. Never played for dogs before, but we'll see how it goes!