We're really rockin' now!

We've been having way too much fun with "The Beatles: Rock Band" since I got it for my birthday. And spending way too much money on it, too. I "invested" my unexpected windfall tips of two weeks ago on a set of drums and the optional cymbal kit, which arrived yesterday.

We played with it for a little while without the cymbals, and all three girls are better at it, from the get-go, than I am. But I'm getting the hang of it. And once I added the cymbals (which really just substitute for the pads, but are more "realistically" placed), it's really fun. You really do feel like a drummer, especially when there's a recognizable "pa-dum-dum, pish!" sequence that you nail.

Anyway, Daleen won't play guitar or sing, but she seems to like the drumming, so we may have ourselves a four-part family band going, with drums, guitar, bass, and a singer. Pretty cool!

K&W at Irvine Spectrum - 24Oct2009

Well, not nearly as great as last week, but still better than sitting at home...

It was a bit colder at first, moving to way colder at the end, and there weren't as many people out, and far fewer children. We got some packs of teenagers, including a big group that had just come from their Homecoming Dance -- the girls in their tiny slinky dresses, and the boys in ties but with their shirt-tails out, as is the style.

I learned the 80's power-ballad "Don't Stop Believing" a while ago, thinking that since it was prominently featured in the pilot episode of "Glee", and a bunch of the kids on our cruise knew (and karaoke-ed) it, that it might go over. Suddenly it's my biggest hit! The teenage kids ask for it every time, and since we get various roving packs of kids, we did it at least 4, maybe 5, times.

One pair of 15-ish girls wanted to sing along with it, and one boldly asked if she sang the song with me, could she have one of the tip-dollars. I said, sure -- I'm willing to support anything out of the ordinary these days. She started out OK, but got distracted and they were both gone before the end of the song! Without her dollar! That's some short attention span! I guess she remembered later on, 'cuz after a while they did reappear so she could claim her "earnings". (I should have told her she could only have 50 cents, 'cuz she only sang half a song, but I didn't want to get into that. I'm guessing it's best not to get all "Papa Don't Preach" on your audience...)

Her friend started singing along this time, so I told her to get on up on the stage and sing, which she did, but she was too busy texting to keep up with the song. Dude, really?!? You can't put down the phone until the end of the song?!? Kids these days...

Anyway, the other unexpected Big Hit is "Hey Jude", which I would never have expected to even "work" with just me and a guitar (and, occasionally, Warren), but it does, and gets requested a lot. I think we did that one 4 times, too. It gets asked-for by people of all ages, not just the teens.

The new songs of the week were Heart's "Alone" and Neil Diamond's "Sweet Caroline", both taken from recent episodes of "Glee". "Alone" went pretty badly, but I'm just learning it, so it might be OK once I get "my arrangement" figured out. "Sweet Caroline" was a little better, but to make the low, low note singable, I had to make the high notes pretty darn high -- in fact, technically out of my range. But with a few hours of warm up, I hit 'em OK, so maybe that one will work better over time, too. I do get asked for Neil Diamond songs from time to time, so it'll be good to have that one on the list, if it works out.

The night started off pretty slow, with really terrible sound (especially with the second speaker accidentally not-plugged-in). It's quite a bit more confusing and difficult to get anything to sound right when Warren's there -- I don't know how they do it when there are even more guys and instruments. (I suppose to start with, they have Sound Men, and better equipment...) It's probably just me -- I learn those songs by myself, and by the time I drag 'em out "in concert", I've heard them a few zillion times with just my voice and guitar, so when Warren layers on his stuff, it sounds suddenly very complex to me, and the sounds I'm used to hearing are lost in the mix.

Anyway, I managed to defeat most of the feedback and get some acceptable tone dialed in eventually. For some reason, there's usually a big(ger) crowd that shows up at 8:30 or 9, so it gets better/funner then, but it was dead again by 10:00, so we quit on-time for once.

Only made $40 in tips this time (or 41 minus 1, I guess) -- quite a drop from the $110 last week. I hope the attendance isn't going to be this bad all the way through winter...

Keith at Irvine Spectrum -- 17Oct2009

OK, wait. A hundred and ten bucks?!? In tips?!?

A whole lot of ones -- I can understand that. But 4 fives -- OK, we get those sometimes. But a ten? And a *twenty?*?!? Who puts in a twenty?

And what was I doing right?!?

It was a *really* nice night, especially after how unseasonably hot it had been all day. But the evening was just perfect, and there were a *lot* of people out. There were a few stretches with nobody really listening, but most of the time I had someone at least partly interested. Started off really well (and there's nothing better (and rarer) than a good start), with a group of 6 or 7 teen girls who were there already when I was setting up, so I handed them a song list before I started, and they asked for several songs before they left.

The rest of the night went pretty much as usual, except there was this stint in the middle where a bunch of little kids were coming up with dollars to stuff into the jar. It had apparently become some kind of instant fad, 'cuz they just kept coming, sometimes the same kid more than once. (What dad gives the kid another and another dollar to feed the jar with? Apparently much better dads than me...) That clearly contributed to the world-record tip total, but I didn't do anything to actually cause it. I wasn't even playing kids' songs at the time, 'cuz all these kids were way in the back and sides, and didn't appear to be part of the action. Shows what *I* know...

Had a tiny little dancer for a while at the beginning. Probably 4 years old, she kept coming up and giving me those classic little-kids' most-important-word-missing sentences: "I got a mmsumgm at home!" "A what?" "A mmsumgm." "Um, sounds nice (I guess)", and "How come you got a thaslmumm? "Um... because?"

Had a guy watching from the close-by planter-box bench, for a long time. I assumed he was waiting for something or someone, but after an hour or more, he finally got up, put some money in the jar, and went and sat back down. After another half hour or so, he got up again, and left. Musta just been enjoying the music, I guess.

Anyway, I was singing good, and playing good, and hitting the foot button on the harmony box with halfway decent accuracy, so I think I may have gotten some good video. Nothing much more to report, but...

A hundred and ten bucks?!?

K&W at Borders South Coast Plaza -- 16Oct2009

A really good night, because of the really good audience (for once). Usually we play to a lot of disinterested people, but this time we had a several people right up front, really listening. It makes a big difference. Having somebody to play for sharpens up our game, and ropes in more people, and round and round -- hopefully, anyway.

My brother came by, which is always nice because I trust his judgement of whether a song is working, or even worth pursuing. I've been working on several songs lately that I wanted him to hear. I even sent him a message on my way to the gig telling him that we'd be there -- which is way I wasn't completely surprised when he walked in, though he hadn't actually gotten that message...

I guess most of the new songs were working pretty well, though I'm pretty sure it's time to give up on "Africa", at least for indoor venues, and until I've practiced it quite a bit more. On the other hand, I'm really liking the way "Lucy in the Sky" works in my arrangement and key.

We had a little family with a toddler early on, and my brother and a young guy who seemed completely into our stuff later. And towards the end, there was a pretty lady who was looking around for a place to sit with her coffee, so I gave her my usual joke of, "There's no extra charge for the comfy seats up front" and she actually took me up on it. Turns out she was Australian, and really got into the music, asking for several songs and apparently staying quite a bit later than she'd intended.

We made $32 to split, which was quite a lot for this place. Not sure how that happened -- I didn't see many people coming over to contribute...

I had my movie camera all set up, but never managed to actually fire it up. I usually wait a while at the beginning 'cuz there's no point in capturing the early not-warmed-up yet songs, and then we were being "accompanied" by the happy little baby, so those takes wouldn't have been much good, either. And then I just kind of let it go -- maybe 'cuz it's nice to play without that pressure for a while.

Keith at Irvine Spectrum -- 10Oct2009

Another great night at Spectrum -- not as good as two weeks ago, but close. Pretty good sound (considering), quite a few sympathetic listeners, and some outright "fans".

It started inauspiciously -- when I got there, the food court was literally empty, not a single person at the tables. It was chilly (compared to previous weeks), and I thought that nobody would show up at all. But as it got darker, it didn't get colder, and the temp seemed appropriate to nighttime activities, and people *did* start to show up.

I played to some indifference at first, as always, but much of the time there was at least someone to play to. And later on, a couple of groups of teens showed up that were open to some fun. I played their requests for a while, then went for my show-stopper, "Don't Stop Believing". When I hit that last "Don't Stop!" and cut off suddenly, they burst into spontaneous "Whooo!"s, shown above. Then we went into "Hey Jude" (by request), and I got some actual participation on the "Na na na na" part at the end. I think it helps that I've been kicking on the harmony box after the first Na na, which I think sounds like people are joining in, and convinces others to do so.

I tried out my newly-worked-up "Lucy In the Sky With Diamonds" again (now that I can play it a little better). It's surprising to me that such a distinctive song sounds OK in my simplified acoustic guitar version. I expected it to flop horribly, but it actually sounds good to me. Check it out on YouTube, here. I love the little trill that the harmony box does on the very last "Ah!".

Conversely, "If You Want To Sing Out", which I can play and sing really close to the original, just kind of lays there in concert. You just never know...

I made $40.40 for the night, plus a single piece of Korean candy, carefully and somehow-significantly laid in front of the tip jar by a cute apparently-Korean girl. I'm not sure of the customs there -- if I eat it, are we married?

Trailmate Camping at Oso Lake - Oct 2009

We had a Trailmates campout at Oso Lake over the weekend. It's a kinda lame campground whose best characteristic is that it's incredibly close -- about 10 minutes from home. But we have fun hanging with our friends, regardless of what else is going on.

There's a "lake", of course, but it's really a reservoir for reclaimed water, so there's no swimming, and we don't fish. (The guys that do fish didn't catch anything anyway.) We could have gone out and paddled around in a canoe, but, for some reason, the girls didn't want to -- sounded boring, I guess.

The camp is owned and run by the boy scouts, so there are "badge earning" activities that we could do: archery, BB guns, slingshots, and tomahawks. We've done the first three before, here two years ago and also at other places, but we'd never tried tomahawks before. But because it's run by the Boy Scouts, their program is designed to impart as much Safety as possible, by extracting out all the Fun. The kid they had running the tomahawk area was apparently a zombie (he sure had the "shamble" down), and worked under the philosophy that the slower he moved, the fewer tomahawks would be thrown, leaving fewer chances for anyone to get hurt. Or have any fun.

On Friday night I set up all the equipment so we could have a movie, but this time I also brought along our Wii, 'cuz I'd gotten "Beatles Rock Band" for my birthday the day before. There weren't many girls there, 'cuz most of them went out for dinner, but we had some fun playing that for a while, and then we watched "Across the Universe", a movie based around a bunch of Beatles songs. Kind of a theme going, there.

On Saturday night we had our "Trailmate Talent Show", which of course failed pretty miserably since none of the girls knew about it, nor would any of them have wanted to demonstrate their talent even if they had. But I managed to get several of them to come up and tell jokes into the microphone, and Geneva and Acacia played their Canon, and Geneva and I played "Ashokan Farewell". Then, since there wasn't anything else, I played for a while: "Waltzing With Bears", "Lollipop Tree", etc. It was great fun for me -- the kids are enthusiastic, and most of the dads seem to enjoy it. The sound was good out there in the quiet, and I was singing quite well. But it was getting cold, so people started to adjourn to the campfire, and I quit before I was all alone out there.

So all in all, a pretty good, if low-key, campout.