Keith at Irvine Spectrum -- 28Nov2009

It was threatening to rain, but it just sprinkled a bit in the afternoon, so I decided to go for it anyway, despite the risk and my lingering cruddy throat.

When I got there, surprise!, the stage was gone! I looked around a while, befuddled, and found it, all the way across the plaza, on the other side of the fountain and turtles, out in the middle of the traffic lane toward the theaters. This puts the fountain between me and the potential audience eating at the tables, gets me closer to the way-distracting "house music" speakers and the fountain noise (and nearly within splashing range right behind the turtles), but puts me out in lots of foot traffic -- except it's behind me. It's pretty true that nobody's eating outside in the cold, so moving away from the tables isn't exactly a bad thing, and I guess I could treat it like the other stage -- turn around and use the fountain as a backdrop, but the little audience I did get was sitting around the benches that surround the planter boxes on either side of the fountain, which was actually kind of nice. If I play the other way, I'll be expecting the entire audience to stand...

It was pretty dead, despite the presumed holiday sale rush, but I had at least a few people tuned in most of the night, and sometimes a pretty nice crowd. There was a heater set up, but it ran out of gas pretty early on. I called the guys out and they eventually brought a new can, but that took a while. Fortunately, I'd brought my overcoat and new top hat (and cleverly had on my long johns). I was cold, but not too bad. I wore the hat when I'd switch to Christmas tunes, and people seemed to get it that it was The Christmas Hat.

Arielle, one of our Princess friends, came by with a group of her high-school buddies, and she shouted "Hi, Keith!" on their way past into the food court. Later, as they all came out again, I was in the middle of singing "Santa Claus is Coming To Town", so I improvised, "He knows if Arielle's been good, so be good for goodness' sake", to her embarrassment and the delight of her friends.

I got a lot of families and clumps of kids, which is great, 'cuz I can do "Rudolph" and "Frosty", etc. "Jolly Old Saint Nicholas" sounds great with the harmony box, as does "Blue Christmas". But, for some reason, that end of the mall is Persian Hangout-ville. They're all very nice people, but we don't match up, musically, much. Especially in, ahem, Holiday Music.

Towards the end, a whole group of well-to-do Persian ladies with some kids came by and tried to listen in. One of them asked me if I knew any French songs. All I had to offer was the Beatles' "Michelle" with Paul's school-boy French lines in it, which they graciously took as Good Enough. Then the younger ladies found some songs they knew on the list, so I did those, but there was a toddler boy who they wanted to get to dancing, so I did some "rock" for him, while all the grammas took pictures. I'm sure that between them all, they accounted for a big piece of the $50 I took in.

And in the last 20 minutes or so, a middle-aged couple came and sat listening for a while. Eventually the wife came over to talk to me -- I assumed she was going to make a request. She did: "Can I sing a duet with you?" Um, sure! I was just noticing that afternoon as I was putting the Xmas tunes into the Big Book, that I have two songs that I can't sing: "Santa Baby", and "Baby It's Cold Outside". They're apparently there for just such an occasion -- so I asked if she knew "Cold Outside", a classic and perfect duet, but nope. "Santa Baby"? Also nope. Shucks. (In her defense, she was clearly a WWII Japanese war bride.)

But she knew "White Christmas", and turned out to have a huge near-operatic voice, way too loud for my poor microphone, but it was OK. She wanted to do another one, so we did "The Christmas Song" (Chestnuts roasting...). It was a bit of a challenge on both of them to follow her near-random timing ideas, but kinda fun. She was done, but wanted to know how often I was there, and how to contact me. I showed her the website address on the songsheet, but I'm not entirely sure I'm hiring right at the present...

Anyway, fun, crazy, different kinda night. I'm definitely glad I took the chance and went -- it only rained a few drops just while I was packing up, just in time.

K&W at Borders Mission Viejo -- 14Nov2009

The terribly broken booking process that Borders was using to schedule the musicians into the various stores broke down entirely when the guy who marginally ran it quit. Since then, it's been hard to tell what's going on, and how to get scheduled. Long story short, I haven't played at Borders MV since the end of March, which has been OK with me since it's very hit-or-miss there.

This time: pretty big "miss". It started out OK, but with only a few people (usually the café is full, even before we get there -- the economy?). We got a little response at first, but that died out, and we were playing to stony silence for a while. Even that's OK sometimes -- I was enjoying being (a) warm, and (b) able to hear myself clearly. Besides, I'm getting used to it -- but it does get a little depressing after a while...

Towards the end though, it went from bad to worse. A group of developmentally disabled teens and their handlers come in. Some sat in the back corner, some (lacking anyplace else) sat at the table right in front of us. I won't go into it, but they started off polite and degenerated into some pretty loud, and rude, behavior. Not to mention distracting. Fortunately, it was pretty close to quitting time anyway, so I got through it for a while, and shut down.

To make it even worse, we couldn't rustle up a place to put the tip jar where people could get to it -- and nobody seemed to want to -- so we made literally $0. At least it was easy to split two ways...

My next opportunity to play there will be January 9. We'll see if the intervening 7 or 8 outdoors-in-the-cold gigs will change how I feel about attempting it again.

Keith at Irvine Spectrum -- 13Nov2009

The gigs seem to be getting lower and lower key as it gets cooler. Not a particularly good sign for my booked-solid November and December...

It was cold, but they did manage to bring out a heater this time. Problem is, I can't bring it up on stage, so it has to sit on my left, keeping my fretting hand warm, but leaving my picking hand pretty chilly. But I did OK. It'll certainly get worse.

And, I actually had even more fun than usual. It wasn't terribly lucrative ("only" $36 in the jar), but I had an almost constant supply of someone to play to, which is pretty rare. Mostly it was groups of teens, but we get along pretty well. I also had a few adult couples that were impressed and hung out for a good long while, it seemed to me, considering I had a heater and they didn't.

Somebody requested "Hotel California" last week, so I learned it all this week. I'd poked at it before, but it didn't seem to fly. This time, it does sound good to me, which either indicates that I'm getting better, or that I'm getting less critical of my own shortcomings as I get older...

So I tried it out "live", and it does seem to work pretty well. I'd'a thought that the Harmony box would be a big help, it being an Eagles song and all, but there are really only a few lines that have harmony in them. The bigger challenge is that it's kind of the same thing, over and over, so I'm trying to vary the guitar style between different verses.

I also brought some Christmas songs out, which nobody seemed to object to. Yes, it's pre-Thanksgiving, but I guess people are getting used to that idea. And I'm only playing the more modern, pop-song style ones, so far. Next week, look out.

The thing I'm starting to notice at Spectrum, though, is that, because the crowd turns over all the time, I tend to play the Greatest Hits, repeatedly, trying to rope in new converts as they breeze by. This means that I *don't* get to play some of the quieter, subtler songs that I tend to get to in a quieter, less dynamic place. Trying to "get" people is a kind of fun in its own right, but it's not as fun musically as getting to play a lot of variety.

Keith at Irvine Spectrum -- 07Nov2009

Quiet, but nice. It was kind of like Borders -- people seemed to like the stuff, but it started out without anyone clapping, and that kind of self-perpetuated. There was hardly anyone there at 6:00 starting-time, but after a while the place was jammed -- more people than I've ever seen there before. Unfortunately, they weren't there to see, or interested in, me. And after dinnertime, it went back its normal half-empty state.

But a few people tuned in eventually, and I had fun. I brought my 3 best, and least "Christmasy", songs to try out -- just 'cuz the actual Christmas season, when counted in number of gigs, is terribly short. I'd expected some dismay from the audience, but when I announced that I was intending to be the first to affront them with too-early Christmas music, there was applause! I guess I'll bring a few more next week.

I kept trying to find something that would "click". I did "Don't Stop Believing" a few times, but it didn't catch on until later in the night when some kids responded, big-time. I asked (knowing the answer) if they were watching "Glee", and got a big "Whoo!" from all 4 of them, so I did my other two "Glee" songs: "Sweet Caroline" and "Alone". They even got into "Caroline" with the "Ba, ba, bas" -- which is definitely what I'm hoping for.

It seemed to be "Let's request songs Keith ought to know but doesn't" night. A girl walked all the way up from her group way in the back to ask for "Here Comes the Sun", based on, I suppose, my having just done "Lucy in the Sky". A huge linebacker of a high school kid asked for "The Times They Are A'Changing" (?!), and settled for hos second choice: "some Johnny Cash" (I did "Ring of Fire"). A guy sent his wife up to ask for "Hotel California" (so I did "Desperado" as the next-best-thing), and a nattily-dressed little foreign man clapped appreciatively for "Leaving on a Jet Plane" and came right up afterwards to ask for "that sunshine on my shoulders song".

And, my biggest fan for the night, a 20-ish kid in a Dodgers cap, started clapping loudly (and virtually solo) for any Beatles songs I did. He came up and put money in the jar and proclaimed "Please play some more Beatles songs, sir!" So I did, and did, and he came up and put more money in the jar, and repeated his request for "more Beatles", so I did. But then a girl requested something (something non-Beatles), so I did that one, and after that, the kid came up a third time to put yet more money in the jar, and request yet more Beatles. I was out of Beatles songs by that point, though, except the "in process" ones in the back of the book, so I did a few of those. I thought I had a lot of (enough of!) Beatles tunes, but apparently not -- gotta go learn some more, I guess. I'm gonna need a bugger notebook, and a stronger music stand!

Anyway, aside from those few demonstrative people, it was pretty quiet (and pretty cold). Still, I made $48, which is less than previous weeks, but nothing to sneeze at, especially compared to the frequently single-digit nights at Borders.

Keith at Irvine Spectrum -- 30Nov2009

I usually only play at the Spectrum on Saturdays, but this Saturday was Halloween. Since I like to play somewhere at least once per weekend, at the last minute I asked the Spectrum people if I could play on Friday instead. I appear to be the only sucker they have playing in the Food Court these days, so I got it.

I got there a little late, 'cuz it's hard to get there at 5:30 on a work day, but nobody was exactly there waiting for me -- there were literally 2 people in the whole outdoor area. I expected it to be lighter than on a Saturday, but not *this* light. More people eventually showed up, but it stayed pretty quiet. I figured it was a lesson well learned -- stick to Saturdays.

Still, it was pretty fun. I had some people listening most of the time, and the usual packs of roving teens. At one point, a small group showed up and a girl was on a "dare hunt" of some kind, and needed to come up and sing a song. Fine with me -- what have *I* got to lose? She turned out to be even worse than she'd claimed, completely tone and rhythm-deaf on "Yesterday" (even with me singing in her ear), so I shut it down after two verses.

Then another girl (from a different roving pack) decided that she wanted to sing too, and did almost as badly on (a similarly-shortened) "Hey There Delilah". I was surprised because usually people with the guts to get up have a little talent to back it up.

I wore my "Shaun of the Dead" costume, which consists mainly of a short-sleeved white shirt, a red tie, and a red nametag (sorry no pictures -- I forgot the camera), which had gone over big-time at OCHSA earlier, but it's a bit subtle and obscure and nobody seemed to recognize it with a guitar in front of it. Admittedly, you've either seen that movie or you haven't -- but I ended up asking a few people directly if they'd seen it, and once reminded of the movie, they suddenly understood that I was wearing the costume. Not nearly as satisfying as having someone recognize it spontaneously -- and a bit painful to think that everyone else just figured that that outfit was just how big a geek I was...

I also brought some little Tootsie Rolls to give away, but since my hands are both busy most of the time, didn't really get a chance to do so much. And it turns out that throwing little candies at people in the semi-darkness doesn't work very well, either.

I had worked up "Ghost Riders in the Sky" (again) for the occasion, and played it a few times, with the harmony box chiming in on the "Yip-ee-i-ay" parts. Sounded really cool.

There was a group of teenage Asian kids who brought their dinner out and inexplicably sat at an up-front table. They were studiously-too-cool to acknowledge me, and ate and smoked and talked for a long time without so much as looking up. But apparently they were listening closer than they pretended to be, 'cuz when someone else took me up on my offer to play requests from the song lists available on the table, one of the girls couldn't help herself, got a list, and started requesting songs -- which they ended up staying around quite a while for. It's pretty satisfying when you can visibly turn some people around.

And towards the end, I had a 20-something couple come by who were *really* into it, for no apparent reason. They sat for a long time, asked for several songs, refused to ask for more ("All your stuff is great -- play whatever you want!"), and clapped and "Whoo-ed" at the end of any and everything. Then some teens came by and dragged some chairs around to form a "front row", and they were asking for stuff (and, typically, not listening to the songs they asked for), but being enthusiastic in between songs. Between them, they made my night.

It seemed like there wasn't very many people there, so I wasn't expecting much in the tip jar, but it totaled $85! The really odd part (and, I guess, explanation) is that there was a twenty, 3 fives, and 3 sets of 5 ones folded together. That means that I made the first $50 off of only 7 generous people -- without selling a single CD, or even noticing anyone who seemed particularly (twenty-bucks' worth) entranced.

It's becoming pretty obvious that people tip a single guy more (sometimes a lot more) than a "band" (even of only 2). I'm obviously basing that on a very limited data-set, but I certainly don't think that "we" (when Warren's there) sound worse than "I" do, and the set list and "performance" is nearly identical. I can only guess that people feel either (a) sorry for, or (b) more personally connected to, a single guy standing there playing. Not that I want Warren to stop coming -- I'm not in this for the money -- but it's an interesting bit of psychology.