Keith at Santa Claus -- 21Dec2008

I got rained out of my officially booked night playing for the line waiting to see Santa Claus, but I had the notion to ask if maybe the act for Sunday wasn't gonna use up the whole time, so I could fill in the rest. The coordinator lady set me up to play from 5 to 6, in-between sets of some classical violinist and/or his classes. Turned out that he was playing in the conference room inside anyway, so I got to stay the whole night (5 to 8).

It was a blast, too. Most fun I've had in a long time, though it was, again, *freezing*. For the last hour, that wasn't vibrato, that was shivering.

But there was a pretty long line all night long, with families where the kids were just the right age, and the parents were very happy to have a distraction for them while they were waiting to get up to see Santa. Which is exactly why I wanted to play there -- it's perfect for me.

I played "Rudolph" and "Frosty" and "Jingle Bells" a few dozen times each, and the others a few times, and over to the regular kids songs for "Lollipop Tree", "You Got a Friend In Me", "Rubber Duckie", etc. I had kids coming over to "help" -- singing along with "Jingle Bells" mostly, but they'd also sing along on some of them from wherever they were standing in line. They all especially like to do the "Like a light bulb!" stuff along with "Rudolph", and a lot of them were Fa-la-la-ing with gusto when I'd do my country-style fingerpicked "Deck the Halls".

Right off the bat I had a little girl, Katherine, who must have been the daughter of one of the Rec Committee people, who was busily passing out the song lists (which I had far too few of, not anticipating having a helper), and collecting requests and bringing them back to me. She also sang along on "Up On the Housetop" and several others, before she came up with this new "job" for herself. Very cute. I miss having little girls around...

I played "Blue Christmas" a few times, too. It's pretty short -- just 3 verses, and no chorus at all, so I have an instrumental verse in it, which Warren normally fills in. But he wasn't there, so I was just playing through that verse anyway, and surprised myself by turning to Katherine's little brother, Gavin, and, while keeping the chords going (which I didn't think I could do -- singing and playing is easy, *talking* and playing is hard!), asking him if he'd brought a harmonica. He said no, so I said, "Saxophone maybe?", which he also didn't have about his person, so I said "Didja bring your electric guitar then, 'cuz this verse really needs some kind of solo", but no luck there either... and it was time to start the next verse. This went over pretty big with the parents waiting in line. As comedy routines go, it was no "Who's On First", but they seemed to enjoy it.

Anyway, I didn't get a lot of applause, but I could tell that the kids were fascinated, and everybody seemed to be pleased. The Rec Committee workers went on and on about how nice it was, and even Santa called out "Great music there, Singer!" as he was leaving. I had my table with hat and CDs out again, but they were in a kind of awkward place for the parents to notice. Still, I sold 4 Christmas CDs (one to the Mayor!), and one "Waltzing With Bears" CD, and made $40. The Rec Committee Coordinator was hugely grateful that I could and did stay the whole evening, since she was apparently unaware that the first guy she booked wasn't actually going to be playing for the crowd. I'm sure she'll be contacting me for other city events through the year, now. Turns out that with 36 years of practice and perseverance, you *can* build a career out of playing music for free. Oh, wait.