Trailmates at Yucaipa Regional Park

We haven't been camping with the Princesses/Trailmates in quite a while, so this was pretty fun. Oddly, in my 11 years in the program, we've never been to this particular campground. It's very civilized. In fact, too civilized -- the only way to get the girls off of their cell phones is to take them somewhere that there's no signal, but this place is really a "city park", so we had plenty of signal there. Oh, well -- taking their phones away is tantamount to torture.

We drove out on Friday at 3:30, so it took 2 hours to get out through Riverside and all. Sunday morning, we got home in only 1 hour. There were only 18 families there and there weren't a lot of planned activities, which is fine with me. And since Geneva's hurt foot is in one of those big plastic boots, she wasn't going anywhere far, either.

But I had her bring her violin, and we ran through some of her fiddle tunes in the afternoon. That was big fun, but she's all paranoid about bothering people with mistakes and/or playing the same song more than once or twice. But I think that every single dad told me at some point how cool that was, and how great she plays.

On Saturday evening, we had our traditional campfire, with skits and such. Three little girls had written a song about "My Dad" (something like: "Dads are stinky, Dads are gross, but my dad is pretty cool -- My dad, my dad, my dad *rocks*!" (Talk about playing to the crowd!)), to a set of two chords that one of them could remember from her guitar lessons. When it came time to do it, I offered to let her play it on my electric guitar, which went over pretty big -- with her, and her dad.

It started to sprinkle Sunday morning during breakfast, which got steadily stronger as we tore down the camp in record time. We all got into our cars just as it really started coming down, and we drove on home. I usually like to hang out as long as possible on Sundays, just to get my money's/hassle's worth, but with the rain we were home by 10:30, and that's OK too.

We're camping again (at the beach!) in 5 weeks, and then we might go on the Colorado River canoeing trip three weeks after that, depending on how I'm feeling about all this by then. The "front door" zipper on the tent that I bought 10 years ago is pretty well shot, but I'm figuring if I can just limp through these last two campouts, I might be out of the camping business entirely. I'm not sure how active we'll be next year -- we'll see.

Keith at Irvine Spectrum -- 14March2009

Not a whole lot more people than last weekend, but much more fun for me, somehow. I was singing inexplicably well (and high!), so maybe that made the difference.

Right at first there was a guy and his wife, waiting for me to start. He immediately started requesting songs, and they were all the really old ones -- "standards". "The Way You Look Tonight", "Stardust", "Georgia On My Mind", "I Only Have Eyes For You", etc. Turned out he was a player himself, and was basically scoping out the competition, or sniffing up repertoire ideas. He wasn't really being sneaky though -- he declared himself and gave me his card as he was leaving. I guess he plays for money, and we're not really competitors at all, since I won't get his gigs, and he wouldn't play mine.

Later on, a mom, a dad, and 5 or 6 twelve-year-old girls came by to eat their pizza. That was fun for a while, 'cuz these are My Peeps, but they had to get to their movie. Then I had a group of 5 or 6 Chinese college kids, who mostly ignored me until I did a Beatle song, which perked them right up. About the same time, a family with a cute 13-year-old red-headed girl arrived, and she was a big Beatle fan, too -- I could see her singing along. I sung up what I had, including my new "If I Fell", and the unlisted but in the book, "Yesterday", and "Hey, Jude".

About then Daleen and Acacia arrived (with Duffy and Anabelle), so I tried out "Dear Prudence", which I know is one of Acacia's favorites. I've been learning the finger-busting guitar part all week, and it's not really ready for prime time yet, but it was such an opportunity that I had to take it. Virtually all the other Beatle songs I do, I've had to transpose down a fourth or so, but this one is so tied into the guitar part that that's not really possible. I've just been singing it down an octave while I'm learning it, but it was a bit of a shock to see just how low that really is when sung "out loud". Probably it's just not do-able, 'cuz of that, unless I just throw away "the sound" of the original and do something very different, so I can get away with not playing in the original key. We'll see.

But it was remarkable how The Beatles (and *only* The Beatles) songs cut across time and space. I pick up people from around here, but also Japan, China, Persia, and everywhere else, and also 50-somethings, but down to 10-somethings, too. This is far from the first time that Beatle songs have sparked some audience connection, and I'm definitely gonna have to learn some more, and move some of the ones that I don't play much up into hard rotation.

To start with, "Yesterday", which I learned a long time ago, but kind of feel like it's Too Done, not to mention Too Cheesy. But it always goes over well when I do it, so it's gotta go on The List. And I've known how to play "Blackbird" on the guitar for ages, and though it's hard to sing and play simultaneously, I've licked that in recent years. When someone (who's not looking at The List) asks for it, it gets a big reaction, so it's gotta get moved up too. Problem is, I don't think there's anything Warren can do while I'm playing it, and I already feel bad every time I play "Scarborough Fair" and he has to put his guitar down and leave the stage. But even the Beatles knew there was nothing that could/should be added to the crazy-cool guitar part Paul came up with for "Blackbird", so I don't think Warren can/should overlay anything on it, either. Maybe it's just a solo-gig tune.

There was also a group of college dudes who were hanging out, and occasionally whooping at the end of a song, but generally not paying much attention. But when they got up to leave, they came over and were wanting to buy some CDs! I had recently decided to amend my "Whatever you want to put in the jar" answer to the "What do the CDs cost?" question, by adding "... most people put in a 5 or 10." (People who read the sign can comfortably get away with just a buck, but the penalty for not reading the sign and asking is guilt if you think a buck is enough.) Anyway, they bought 2 or maybe 3 CDs, and are probably the guys who stuck 4 fives, folded together, in there. Wow.

I had brought the electric along, and had it out, and was in fact staring right at the yellow-fur insides of its case all night, sitting out in front of me as people threw money into it. But I plumb forgot to actually fire it up. Oh well, it's a cool stage decoration, I guess.

And I brought my new camera out, too. I got one similar to Warren's because it (a) has better quality audio and video, and (b) takes a big-enough RAM card to record a whole evening without intervention. With the small cards I have now, I only got an hour's worth, but it's a start. The videos are way bigger and clearer, with great sound (even though it was right in front of the amp, and I'd expected it to be blown out. I'm pretty pleased. I set it up over to the side, so people wouldn't steal or trip on it, but unfortunately since I'm my own cameraman, it was exactly where the head of the guitar is in front of my face half the time. Doh! But I brought it out precisely to start making the mistakes you have to make before you figure something out, and now I know that one... I clipped out and posted 4 songs up on YouTube, if you're interested: http://www.youtube.com/y7alanzo

And I made 64 bucks in tips. Very good for another cold, sparsely-attended night. We went to Costco the next day, and I was dying to spend some of it on something, but I couldn't find anything that I wanted. I said so to Daleen, and she said, "You can just consider it a partial payment on that camera." And I guess she's right, but she's no fun...

Guitar Discovery

I've been fingerpicking (aka "Travis picking") for so long that I can't even remember how to strum. Typically, there's a pattern of eighth notes that you pick with your thumb and three fingers. Most of the time, it's one note at a time, with occasional exceptions where the thumb and one of the fingers play at once, in a "pinch" motion. This makes an intricate, pretty, refined, musical stream -- think of "Scarborough Fair", "The Boxer", or (my latest song/obsession) "Dear Prudence".

James Taylor also fingerpicks nearly everything he plays, including "Country Road". I've been trying to work that one up for a while, but I couldn't get it to sound right -- "big" enough -- unless I went to some kind of hybrid thumb-picking but fingers-strumming, right-hand method. It's big enough that way, but it's not the way he's doing it, and leaves the finesse behind.

Yesterday, I was poking at it again, and somehow started fingerpicking it, but I was (accidentally?) using two fingers at a time, inside the pattern. Eureka! My "training" has disallowed picking more than one finger at a time, so I've never done it. It'd be like signing your name with the pen held between the wrong two fingers -- you *could* do it, but you never *would*.

But, bam, it sounds a lot more like what James is doing, and solves that mystery. I feel like an idiot that I never thought of/discovered it before.

"We'll be saying a big hello to all intelligent life forms everywhere... and to everyone else out there, the secret is to bang the rocks together, guys."

K&W at Irvine Spectrum -- 07Mar2009

Well, I dunno -- that was a weird one. It was just so extremely *variable*.

Before I was even set up yet (I got there too early, and was waiting for the previous guy to clear the stage), this sweet little apple-doll of an HR lady from work and her husband showed up. They were gonna listen to me for a while, and then go see "Watchmen". She seemed to really like my stuff, but wanted me to play something "peppier", and when I did, they got up -- and danced. To that one, and two or three subsequent songs. That doesn't happen very often (or at all, before?). There was basically nobody else around, and after they left, that's how it was for most of the rest of the night. Admittedly, it was darn cold.

We did get the customary roving bands of teenagers, many of whom are tempted, if usually not quite bold enough, to harass us for the crime of being old. Sometimes they come around -- after the obligatory "comic" requests for shred metal or punk bands, followed by the oh-so-ironic requests for "Puff, the Magic Dragon" and "Rubber Duckie" -- to actually asking for some classic tune that they like: "Let it Be" or something.

But my voice was sometimes fine, and sometimes just trashed, and then OK again. Never seen it like that before. My playing was good, whenever my fingers were warm enough to play. We started out with no heater, but the maintenance guys finally showed up with one. It worked for about 10 minutes, and went out. There was nothing much we could do about that, but a nice lady in the audience (at that point, she and her husband *were* the audience) went inside the Food Court and somehow found a way to get the guys to come back out with a new propane tank. Wow -- that was beyond the call of duty.

One odd thing -- a lady asked Warren how much the CDs were (as they do since he's close to the CD table), and he told her "Whatever you want to put in the jar", and she ended up putting a twenty in there, and taking 3 CDs -- 2 "Live" and 1 "Bears". First time I've seen anyone decide they needed multiple copies.

Anyway, overall, it was pretty good, and pretty bad, in turns. I think maybe I was just tired.

Keith at Borders Mission Viejo -- 28Feb2009

Quite nice. Warren couldn't make it, so I was solo, in complete contrast to the gig the night before with both Warren and Bobby. Smaller, quieter, indoors. Warm.

Lots of friendly people, off and on, through the evening. Starting out with Daleen's new next-block-over dog-walking friend and her husband (and later on, Daleen herself). They apparently don't get out much, and she was grinning like a schoolgirl the whole night, asking for songs, and taking pictures.

Towards the end, a little girl (about 10) showed up (with two boys and a dad), who plopped down in the table right next to me, and joined right in singing "If I Fell". She was apparently a big Beatles fan, so I ended up doing several Beatle songs for her/them: "All My Lovin'", "Octopus's Garden", etc., and my new "Hey Jude" (which I'm deciding does work better capoed up 2). She sang along quietly on most of them -- that was fun.

I was singing pretty well, and feeling a lot more in control than the night before, and had a pretty widespread, if low key, response most of the night. But I guess they liked me more than they were showing, 'cuz there was $25 in the tip jar, which is pretty good from so small a group.

K&W with Bobby at Spectrum -- 27Feb2009

OK, that was a blast. My old buddy Bob Knight came out from Minnesota for the week, so I quickly set up a Spectrum date so he could "sit in". It was an unfortunately cold Friday night, so almost nobody was there -- except for the friends who made our night (heck, month!) by showing up anyway. And there were lots of 'em -- our families, my parents' best friends from the old days (who've known me since I was "a musical proverbial knee-high"), people from high school, college, Toshiba old days, and Indian Princesses -- too many to list! We had 20 or so friends, and only 4 or 6 "other people". But that was cool, too -- it was practically a Private Concert!

Back in the 70's I was just a beginner on guitar, so I wound up on (borrowed) bass behind Bob, or Bob & Jim, who both played amazing guitar and sang. I was too shy to sing in those days, and singing while playing bass is nearly impossible for me anyway. I eventually bought my own bass, which I still have and Bobby played on Friday. But it's been 30+ years and I've learned a few things on guitar and gotten a bit braver, and in the meantime Bobby's been off in Minnesota becoming a bass-playing monster, so this time it was reversed -- I played and sang with Bobby adding a bass line and harmony vocals, all right off the top of his head; we didn't have time to rehearse anything.

And it was amazing! First off, just having a bass there adds incredible depth, if that's not stating the obvious. And I've been yearning for vocal harmony in the act for years. I've had to stay away from songs that need harmony or they lose their essential character, but I still have lots that can certainly benefit from some. And they did. In spades.

I did a bunch of my normal songs, but I also added several that I've tried before but couldn't make work. I thought that with Bob added to 'em, they might fly better. And they did. So that was fun. Bobby was apparently surprised by some of the weirder selections I pulled out -- songs that maybe don't seem do-able, but that I've worked up some crazy arrangement of anyway.

I also re-worked up an "in-joke" (too long a story to go into here) song, "Hey Mister, That's Me Up On the Jukebox", just for the irony of doing it again with the reversed roles. Except I guess I sang it both times. Let's just say that I do it without a capo these days.

Anyway, it all went by way too fast. I really should have gone through and planned which songs to get to, rather than just flipping through the book and finding one. I guess I wasn't sure what was gonna work and what wasn't until I was there to hear how it was going. We'll just have to do it again sometime to get to those other couple dozen songs.

I set up my little camera to take video, but didn't get very much of the show, not to mention the difficulty of taking pictures under so much backlighting. But there are 7 songs to choose from. They're a little rough (Bobby was playing bass and singing with no rehearsal, and the mix was completely different than what I'm used to (with the really loud (from where I was) bass), so I was over-singing, etc., etc.), but really fun -- http://www.youtube.com/y7alanzo

Bobby, come back to California! All is forgiven!