Keith at Irvine Spectrum -- Sun, 22May2011

The last Sunday I played here was pretty dead, so I wasn't expecting much.  And it was kinda weird - people were hanging around and listening, but there was hardly any clapping all night.  It was like there was a sign up or something.  I can see them mistaking a Borders for a library, but not the big open plaza at Spectrum...

There were lots of people out, so I had someone to play to most of the night, albeit totally silent someones.  I managed to get a few brave souls to come up and request some songs, and in the middle I had the now-standard Kid Party, with 6 or 8 kids dancing away.  Had one little boy ask if I knew "Bringing Home a Baby Bumblebee", and when I said I didn't, he proceeded to "teach it to me" - and all of the several verses, too, if he hadn't been mercifully pre-empted by his mom.

Despite there being a lot of people around, the sound was strangely clear -- I could hear myself almost as well as at an indoor gig.  Maybe I was just turned up louder than usual, though I wasn't having any feedback problems, either.  Anyway, it was great fun to play and sing with the clarity, so I felt like I was doing really well.

Although the audience was so oddly quiet, I came home with $83 in the jar, quite a bit more than the last Sunday I played here.  And I didn't get that "I should start later" feeling that I had last time, either.  In fact, it occurred to me that, although the stores close at 8 on Sunday (and the "shift" is theoretically over), the best audiences I've gotten on Saturday nights come after the movies let out, so I thought I might try to hang in there until 9 or so.  But my last "customers" left at 8:40, it didn't really look like another wave was forthcoming, and I was starving, so I packed it in.

Keith at Foothill Towne Center -- Sun, 15May2011

My first regular (as in (hopefully) recurring) paying gig! This place is where we usually go to the movies, so I'd seen people playing at the food court there many times, and felt sorry for them 'cuz it looked pretty awful -- lots of being ignored and kids playing tag around the tables. My only guess as to why there were people there at all was that they were being paid. Turns out I was right, and managed to track down the lady that books the acts, and emailed her to see what it takes to get on the roster.

Amazingly, she did what no one has done before, and just listened to the videos and MP3s on my website -- usually you have to send in a CD and a bunch of "bio"-type stuff. But she went for the "virtual audition", and surprised me by emailing back that I sounded good and asked what I charge for 3 hours! I told her that I didn't really have a fixed rate, gave her the old "it depends on the venue" line, and asked what they usually pay. She said between $75 and $100, I said I'd be happy to do it for the hundie, and she offered me a date.

The place is an open patio, but with a solid roof. There are several restaurants -- pizza, tacos, Chinese, ice cream -- and lots of tables and chairs in the shared patio. But the only non-food thing nearby is the multiplex, so it's not really a hang-out like Spectrum. I didn't expect many people...

I set up on one edge, where I had found some power outlets in the bushes. Looking at the pictures, that may have been a bad choice, since I was radically back-lit, so probably hard to look at. Guess I'll have to figure something else out next time.

Worse, it turns out that the place is one big reverb chamber. With the reverb that my rig adds already, it was way way too much -- that first song was crazy-sounding. So I turned off the artificial reverb and let the place handle it -- it was probably still too much, but sounded pretty cool.

The whole first hour was entirely people who had clearly just come from the nearby Mega Church -- you don't see ladies in dresses on a Sunday otherwise. Just a guess, but I think what He Would Do is give the struggling musician a break and clap a little at the end of the songs. Just sayin'...

There was also a big birthday party over at the side for a 4 or 5 year old Japanese kid, apparently all expat families. That was pretty noisy, but my Spectrum experience has taught me how to ignore that kind of thing.

For the last hour or so, my brother and his wife were there, and a super friendly couple who sat down right in front and kept me supplied with requests. The lady was wearing a name tag that said "Judy-something, Practitioner". I'm not sure what that is, since I've only ever heard it followed by "of the Black Arts", and she didn't look like a witch to me.

The highlight for me was when the guy asked me to play "Suite: Judy Blue Eyes". That song pushes my skills and concentration to their limits -- what with the three different guitar styles, two languages, and elaborate harmony box button dance needed. By the time I was done, I was so adrenalined-up that I could hardly play the next-requested quiet song. But Judy liked me so much that she's hunted me down on Facebook and is hooking me up with another musician friend of hers who plays at Downtown Disney, and she thinks might be able to get me the info on how to get booked there. I'm not holding my breath, but wouldn't *that* be cool?!?

The first half of the show, with nobody clapping or paying any attention, led me to believe that I'd end up with an empty tip jar, but I just kept on smilin' and playin' 'cuz I was "gettin' *paid*, son!" But after the church people left and the normal lunch crowd showed up, people were more demonstrative and I ended up with $37 (including two origami "bow tie bucks"). That plus the $100 is not too shabby at all.

K&W at Borders Mission Viejo -- Sat, 14May2011

Best Borders gig in a long time! The place was uncharacteristically full when we got there, stayed that way most of the night, and we managed to rope some people in right away, and had friendly faces to play to all the way through.

But the highlight for me was when a cute little toddler wandered out right in front of us. She seemed to be trying to give Warren a magazine that she'd found somewhere. We all watched her for a little while, and I broke into my new finger-picked and harmony-boxed "Twinkle, Twinkle". She was so tiny, I didn't really expect her to know it. But her little face lit up like a searchlight as it dawned on her that she recognized it. And it got about the biggest round of applause of the night -- more for her than me, no doubt.

We've been making nearly-nothing in tips at these Borders gigs, and since the tables were all full anyway, I couldn't snag one (and didn't really feel like bothering) to put out the usual display of signs, cards, CDs, and tip jar. But I did set the jar over on the windowsill -- not terribly convenient for people to get to, but at least visible and available.

So I was pretty surprised to get anything at all, and more so to find $16 in there -- not a record or anything, but pretty darn good for this place.

Keith at Irvine Spectrum -- Fri, 06May2011

A really surprisingly slow night. It seemed like there were hardly any actual adults out, and maybe that's exactly what it was - I guess the working folks are too tired to go out on a Friday. There were plenty of teens though, and I did all right with various clumps of them, but none of them stick around for very long, so I end up doing the same songs over and over.

At one point I had 5 or 6 little kids, but they were all *very* little (toddlers and preschoolers), so I tried out my fingerpicked and harmonized rendition of "Twinkle, Twinkle". That went over pretty well, but I'd forgotten about little kids' tendency to respond to something that they like with "Again!". It's a little embarrassing/weird to play it in the first place - I really don't want to play it all night long.

Hardly anyone was putting anything in the tip jar, but then a guy came over and asked for "I Only Have Eyes For You". While I was looking for the song sheet, he asked, "OK if I get change for a twenty out of here?". I said, "Sure", but then partway into the song it occurred to me that there probably wasn't enough money in the jar to make much "change". Nothing I could do about it but watch as he spent the whole song pulling ones out, and straightening, stacking, and counting them. I guess he found enough though, 'cuz there was $24, a twenty and four ones, in there when I got home. A very low "take" for Spectrum, but still way more than we ever pull in at a Borders gig. It'll buy a couple of iPad apps...

Keith at Irvine Spectrum -- Sun, 01May2011

Must have been the month-changeover issue, but I'm not sure how I managed to book two Spectrum gigs in a row. After almost 5 hours of playing the night before, my fingertips were pretty shot by the end of this 4 hour shift. My voice held out surprisingly well, though.

It started out *really* slow. I may have to re-think the start time on Sunday afternoons. (On the other hand, who am I kidding? If they'll let me play, I'll play.) My brother and his wife were there right at the start, so they got to witness the first couple of hours of dead air -- me desperately trotting out all my Best Stuff, and getting stone silence in return. It was a bloodbath...

But, naturally, right after they left, some little kids came up to watch, so I started in with the dance tunes. This quickly snowballed into the biggest Kid Party I've ever had -- at least a dozen kids, really getting into it. The gravitational attraction of Kids Having Fun is pretty irresistible to other kids, and their parents. And they stayed and stayed, too -- I was running out of danceable songs by then end, and that's never happened before. (I can't take pictures while I'm playing, but here they are waiting for the next song.)

Unfortunately, after a dozen songs or so, it degenerated into the bossy kids hijacking the show by whiningly insisting on songs they'd never heard of (and wouldn't really like) from the list, just by the titles. This bothered me at first, but then I figured that there are no bad songs on the list, and their essentially random selection process wasn't really much different than me choosing. I suppose, alternately, I could have just agreed to play whichever song they asked for, and then actually played any song I wanted -- how would they know?

Anyway, after the kids all drifted away it was evening and (a) it was a lot cooler, and (b) I started getting the dating crowd, who tend to sit and listen. Like (almost) always, the last hour was really nice, but I was getting really sloppy from fatigue, hunger, and fingertip pain, so I actually quit at Quitting Time for once. Almost exactly half the tips as the night before, but $56 is nothing to sneeze at, and watching those kids dance was the most fun I've had in a long time.

Keith at Irvine Spectrum -- Sat, 30Apr2011

Started off a little slow -- lots of people around, but they were strangely unresponsive. But after a while I started getting some people tuned in, and in the last hour or two, had made some real "fans". Fewer little kids dancing than usual, but just as many bands of teenagers asking for the few semi-current songs I do. I must have done "Hey Soul Sister" and "I'm Yours" 5 times each.

Had a big family come up with a little boy, asking for "Twinkle, Twinkle". Of course I said that I didn't know it, but they seemed sincere, so I said I'd try to fake it. The chords are easy enough, and it actually took off when it occurred to me to kick on the harmony box. I might have to take a look at working up a decent arrangement of that, since I do get a lot of tiny kids who ask for "Itsy Bitsy Spider" and such. Might be nice to have one that they'll recognize.

But then another mom came up holding a 4 or 5-year old boy, asking for "any Bob Marley". According to the mom, "One Love" is the kid's favorite, but I only (half) know "I Shot the Sheriff", so I faked the first verse, to a completely blank response from the kid. Whatever.

(I do get a surprising number of requests for Bob Marley, but do you *really* want to hear the white suburban, baloney with mayo, version?!? Or should I just save us both the embarrassment...)

While I was setting up, a lady came over to tell me that she had also been booked for that stage, and somehow knew that it was in fact, triple booked -- yet another group thought they were supposed to be there. They we going to go play at the "for pay" stage, which made sense since they had, indeed, paid. That was confusing because you don't have to pay for the Food Court, and, how did they know that there wasn't already someone else on the other stage, too?

Anyway, I guess it's a good thing that I get there early, 'cuz the double-booking resolution seems to be "first come, first served", 'cuz they lady never implied that I should be the one to back down -- she just wanted to let me know. Not having any way to check, I had to assume that I knew what I was doing (though there's no guarantee of *that*), so I didn't volunteer to leave, either. But I did spend the whole night worrying that I had screwed up somehow, and had "stolen" the stage, and would be henceforth banned (or at least "non grata"). But I've since checked my email, and I do have a confirmation message, so at least the snafu wasn't my fault.

And I'm glad I stayed. While counting the tip money ($113!), I came across a tightly-bundled origami "packet" of three dollar bills wrapped around a (long!) note. (If you're reading this on my blog, you should be able to click the full-text thumbnail and see it big enough to read.) I won't quote the whole thing here, but it starts out: "You are an amazing talented man. Your destiny is big and mighty." And it gets wacky (-er) from there. It ends with "Your wildest dreams are about to come true, get ready for all you wanted and more. You are loved."

Apparently, she (I'm assuming "she") liked my stuff a bit... I can't quite tell if she's a fan or a fortune teller, but since she couldn't have been able to see my palms while I was playing guitar, let's assume the former.