The highlight came early on, when a Birthday Party of 9 (?) year-old girls, all dressed up as the cast of the new "Alice in Wonderland" movie, stopped by to eat some ice-cream bars on their way to see the movie. (Click the pic to see it bigger.) I got my "start" playing for little girls at Indian Princess campouts, so I'm not only prepared to do it, I love to -- and it was a great and easy way to get the ball rolling. They were already excited to be there, having fun in their costumes, getting even higher on the ice cream, and ready to party with half-a-dozen of my kids' songs.
The Birthday Girl was the Mad Hatter, and I was impressed that they had a set of actual twins to play Tweedle-Dee and Dum. I guess they couldn't find any mouse ears for the Dormouse, 'cuz she had rabbit ears like the White Rabbit and March Hare. She didn't seem to mind. And I liked the blue feather boa around the neck of the Caterpillar. Big fun, all around.
And a pretty good night even after they left. No repeat of the way-too-loud background music from last week, even though I'd neglected to send a nasty-gram to the entertainment lady. Guess it wasn't necessary.
The new songs of the week were "Dear Prudence", and "Lyin' Eyes". Both use my new "capo across only 5 strings" trick. I learned "Prudence" before, playing the real, and surprisingly difficult, fingerpicking arrangement, but it was too hard, and too hard on my hands, to be worth it. I suddenly decided that a simplified arrangement wouldn't kill anybody, so now it's both do-able, and quite nice. And I get to kick in the full "choir" in the harmony box for "won't you come out to play", and it sounds awesome.
And just to show how cocky I'm getting, I transposed and worked up "Lyin' Eyes" at 4:00, for a gig that started at 6 -- with dinner in-between. It's normally strummed, but I don't strum so I'm fingerpicking it, and can "pull out" most of the signature lead line in the intro as I go. The trick is remembering where the "thirds" are for each of the chords as they go by, and making sure to pluck them on the downbeats in (or out of) the fingerpicking pattern, so that the harmony box knows how to sing correctly. It's a bit of a lot to remember, while the song is going by: keeping the picking going and hitting those thirds, kicking the box's buttons on cue, and singing the words, all at the same time. But if it was easy, everybody'd do it.
Had several groups of nice people, families and teens, and made $42. Played a lot of kids' songs -- and not just for the birthday kids. I think I did "Puff" 3 times, a new record. But also "Whole New World", "You'll Be In My Heart", "Waltzing With Bears", even "Rubber Duckie", and several more. And got another request for "Teddy Bears' Picnic", which I hadn't played at all for probably a year, but have now played for the last three gigs running. What's up with that?
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