Keith at Irvine Spectrum -- 26Feb2011

Lots of fun. The weatherman had been predicting another rainout, but the storm apparently got here a day early, and it was dry most of the day. On the other hand, it was getting desperately cold, but I decided that it wasn't any worse than back in December, and I'd toughed that out...

When I got there, the maintenance guys had apparently given up on me and were about to cover the stage with a plastic tarp, but when they saw me, they consented to let me give it a go. I told them to forego the usual light tree and table cloth, which, it turned out, allowed me to go way past the usual shutoff time, 'cuz they had no stuff to come take away. I had my own heater and "spotlight", and the table they bring is just stored flattened up under the stage, so I could "put it away" myself.

But it was frightfully cold. I had my "going to the snow" clothes and my heater so I did OK, except for my fingers, which have been worse. It did keep the "crowds" down a lot, of course, but there was almost always somebody listening in, and the usual intermittent group of teens wanting to hear my 3 or 4 "less than 5 years old" songs. Had one group of very young teens, all decked out in lenses-poked-out 3D "geek glasses", who insisted that I play some Justin Bieber songs. I promised that I'd learn some for next time (but my fingers were crossed).

Just after 8:00, it started to hail. Yes, hail. I had been worrying about rain, but surely didn't expect hail. Of course, hail isn't exactly "wet", so it was actually OK, but after a few minutes, it dissolved into light rain, so I had to unplug the electronics and take cover (with my guitar) under the awning in front of the Starbucks. It was polite enough to rain lightly, and straight down, so I figured the amp and speaker would be OK, and I hastily slid the shouldn't-get-wet stuff up underneath the table.

It rained for 25 minutes or so, and I used the time under the awning to work out a passable version of the Beatles' "Rain", which, when it finally tapered off and convincingly stopped, I played at length to the wry smiles of the people hustling by. It took a while for people to decide that it was safe to stay and hang out, and I'd almost decided to call it a night after my empty-plaza Rain Medley ("Rain", "Rhythm of the Rain" and "Shower the People" (which I hadn't actually "thought" of, but fatefully accidentally flipped to in the book)). But I'm glad I stayed, 'cuz when the crowds started to reform, they were the most appreciative of the night. And since I had no forced shutdown time, I kept on playing 'til after 11. The last hour is always the best, so why not stretch it to two?

Had one young lady, while reading through the Song List, give an audible squeal of delight at some song-discovery. I had to wait until the end of the song in progress to find out it was "To Make You Feel My Love", which I haven't played in probably two years. It's not even on the list anymore, but it was on the ancient version that I happened to have a few plastic-protected copies of and dug out after the current ones got soaked. Fortunately, the chord sheet is still in The Book, so I played it reasonably well, despite barely remembering how the tune even goes. Great song -- maybe I'll put it back on the List...

First time out for the newly-resurrected "Wonderful World", which sounds great now, thanks to the Harmony Box. There's also been a sudden and inexplicable resurgence in the popularity of "Blackbird". I had started out the evening with a cruddy throat, but by the third time through, I was cleared out, singing quite well, and hitting even the way-too-high notes in it.

I had brought a new "big salad bowl" tip jar that I got at the dollar store. When it started to rain, I figured that the money would be fine, but I'd failed to realize that the bowl would collect lots of water, and the $41 "take" was a soggy lump when I went to collect it. When I got home, I laid it out on the floor to dry, and next morning the cat was making sure it was well protected (and killed). Thanks, Zadi.

Keith at Borders South Coast Plaza -- 18Feb2011

Usually this is a K&W gig, but Warren had a better offer, so I went in solo. As usual, mostly apathetic people there, but occasionally I managed to pique someone's interest. Got a big smile from a little 8-year-old girl and her dad when I fired up "A Whole New World" from Aladdin.

A storm was coming in (the one that would rain out my scheduled gig at Spectrum the next night), so I played and sang, and watched the outdoor shade umbrellas getting tossed. I managed to alert the store guys to go get them before they got too damaged, I hope.

The wind came up pretty hard, and one of the windows behind me was loudly rattling in the frame or something, and sounding like someone was knocking to come in. Spooky, and distracting.

But not as much as the guy who was there the whole evening, sitting in the very corner chair almost next to me, who clearly had the nasty cold that I'm still recovering from. He hacked and coughed and horked all night long, while staring at his iPad screen, and occasionally commenting on a song I'd played. I wasn't really worried about catching it myself, since I've already got it, but there were other people there, and, Dude, I'm tryin' to play here! Some people...

K&W at Borders Mission Viejo -- 12Feb2011

Pretty typical quiet evening at Borders. As usual, most of the people were there to read/study, not to listen to some local musicians, so it was tough to get anything going.

I pulled out all the usual crowd-pleasers, but couldn't make a dent, so I decided to have some fun for myself by trying some more unusual (and, admittedly, ill-advised) numbers (i.e., "The Air That I Breathe" and Heart's "Alone"). That, obviously, didn't work either.

Finally though, near the end of the evening, some people came in who were tuned in a bit, and requested some songs. One of their requests was "I Want To Hold Your Hand", and I'm sure they were expecting "the usual way", but I've been doing it in the "Across the Universe" / "Glee" way, which is much slower and makes it astonishingly deep. Sometimes I feel a little embarrassed and self-conscious doing it that way, and sometimes (like this time) it rips my guts out. Took me a while to recover enough to play the next song...

Keith at Irvine Spectrum -- 11Feb2011

What a great night! Most pure *fun* I've had in ages. At the risk of besmirching my 56-year zero-drugs policy / record / reputation, I think I was a bit high on cold medicine and Mountain Dew, and feeling completely uninhibited -- or as uninhibited as an old suburban white boy gets.

Now, I've been playing almost every weekend for nine years now, and I'm completely over the whole stage fright thing (except to just get that first song started). It doesn't even phase me to make mistakes anymore -- for one thing, "Hey, nobody's perfect", and for another, "It's too late now!" But I still have enough pride to want to do the best job I can with each song, so there's always the self-induced pressure to get it right.

But this time, even that seemed to be out the window. Not that I was playing sloppy and screwing up a lot -- but apparently, after all this time, I can play those songs more on automatic pilot than I think I can. And being able to just let it go and "let 'er fly", is, well, exhilarating.

I felt like I was connecting with the songs more than ever, and really giving them more oomph in the singing. And, of course, it becomes a feedback loop -- the more I gave the songs, the more people were tuning in, which makes me give it even more. And actually (hopefully?) it may have been entirely that audience feedback, and not the pseudoephedrine/caffeine cocktail.

It was a nice night, and I had the feeling that there were people really listening, basically all the time. It's odd -- the audience is kinda far away. This time, I got two opposite feelings about it: 1) They're so far away that it doesn't really matter what I do, and 2) They're so far away, I can't tell, but they might be really into it. Either way, I was swingin' for the fence.

And lots of people responded. I had groups come stand up close, so I *knew* they were listening. A big clump of 8th graders came and requested songs, and then were requesting the next song even before the previous one was half over. Uh, guys, I can only sing one song at a time. Lots of families with little kids dancing, so I flipped to my new "dance tunes" section in the book and went for it.

And toward the end, when I'm playing for the "don't want the date to end" crowd, I got into a set of sentimental stuff and was really laying it on thick, and they were eating it up. I was really cranking, and it was really working.

Or maybe that's the cough medicine talking. But, like a drunk who thinks he's funny -- please don't tell me different.

Keith at Irvine Spectrum -- 28Jan2011

Weird, crazy, fun, but somewhat disappointing (and cold) night.

When I first got there, there were some people messing with equipment on the stage. Oh no, not double booked again! But, they were tearing down, not setting up, so no problem except for the heart attack...

So I set up my stuff, and then noticed that the "house music" was even louder than usual, so I called the Maintenance guys to get them to turn it down. Their response: "It's a new system, we can't turn it down." Really?

Unbelievable. Seems like every time this gig starts to get reasonable, they come up with a new way to screw it up. Move the stage to someplace stupid, shut off the power unexpectedly in the middle of the show, and now, loud 80's rock playing almost as loud as I am. And this on top of them telling me that "due to the new layout and increased interest", they're going to start charging $50 to play on this stage, like they do for the other one. I don't think they'll get many takers if they can't figure out how to turn the music down...

It was doubly annoying because I had set up a bunch of video cameras to record with, but the recordings would be useless with the "second sound track" running through them, so there was no point in starting them up (except to catch the images here).

But there was nothing I could do about it, so I just powered through. While I was playing, of course, I was way louder than the house music (at least where I was standing), but as soon as I'd end a song, there it was again. Not sure how it sounded to people who were standing halfway between the house speakers and mine, though -- but I didn't see anyone edging away from the wall with the speakers on it, so it apparently wasn't as bad "out there" as it was on the stage.

Anyway, for some reason, it turned into "Guest Star Night". Early on, a girl came up and asked if her friend could sing. This seemed more joke than serious offer, and this idea seldom works out since all my songs are transposed into my vocal key, so I said, "Sure, but I only have one mic". Oddly, that seemed OK with them, so she came up on stage and wanted to sing "Time After Time". This was an even worse plan than almost any other song I do, because my arrangement of it is quite a bit different than the recording that she's used to, but we plowed through it, and since nobody but me could hear her when her version diverged from mine, it was no problem, and she seemed pleased to get to try. Go figure.

Later on, a kid carrying a guitar broke loose from his pack of friends, came up and asked if he could play a song. Nobody happened to be listening just then, and I was freezing, and getting not inconsiderably annoyed with the house music, so I said, "Sure". His guitar didn't have a pickup in it, so I gave him mine, and strapped the mic to his head, and stepped off the stage.

He started up a song I've never heard before (I decided later that he probably wrote it himself), stopped and fetched a lyric sheet out of his pocket, and finally managed to get through it. Couldn't hear a word of it, and his singing wasn't the greatest, but it took guts. As I was getting the guitar back, his friend asked if he could play one, too, and I couldn't see any reason not to let him, so he fired up a kind of speed-metal superfast strummy thing, did about half of it and quit. Thanks guys, that'll be plenty.

And then, almost at quitting time, a young Persian lady marched straight up to me from way across the quad. I said, "You look like somebody on a mission!", and she said that her husband had dared her to sing a song. Probably they had seen the proceedings earlier on, and decided that this was OK. She came up and I strapped the mic on her, and asked what song she wanted to do: "Let it Be". I strummed a little of it, and she decided that it was a bad key for her, so I mentally transposed it back to the original key, and fired it up. She wasn't bad, though a bit matter-of-fact, but I was mostly pleased to be able to play it through in the "wrong" key -- looking at one set of chords, but playing another, without completely crashing her.

Ended up with $44 in the jar, which is low for this place, but not bad, and understandable considering how cold it was. I did *not* split it with my co-stars...