Keith at Irvine Spectrum -- 17Sept2011

A really good night -- great weather and lots of people out. Of course with the distance between me and the audience in the comfy chairs, there was the usual difficulty getting any audible response from anybody, but I'm getting used to accepting "attention" over "applause", and a lot of people stayed for long periods, and by the end of the evening almost all of the furniture had been adjusted to be pointing my direction, and that's a good sign.

It was the first trial of my new wireless microphone, which worked out pretty well. At first I was getting some "untuned radio" noise, but I moved the receiver around a bit and it seemed to go away. After a little while, I didn't even notice the difference, which I guess is the whole point -- there's no cable to fight with and "notice". Usually I'm fiddling with the mic cord on one side, and the guitar cord on the other -- with the mic cord gone, there's a lot less hassle. Win.

I could even get the matching wireless thingie for my guitar, but the guitar cord is a lot less trouble (since it's not hanging off of my head!), so it's probably not worth it. It's not like I do a lot of Mick Jaggering around the stage...

Earlier in the week, I got the notion to learn "She Loves You", for some reason. I usually feel like playing rock songs by myself on an acoustic guitar is kinda lame, but since I only play them for the little kids, I'm getting more comfortable doing it. And if the kids are happy, the moms don't mind. And the harmony box goes a long way to making the song sound "realer" (especially Beatles songs), even without bass and drums.

The first hour went by and it looked like the hoped-for crowd of kids wasn't going to materialize. But finally I got a pair of little girls dancing, which prompted some others to come out, and after a while we had a whole thing going, with a chorus of kids shouting "Another one!" after each song. I have 5 or 6 songs for this purpose now, but I may need a few more, since this is turning out to be a regular (and fun!) thing.

It was also the first outing for the new CD that I recorded, but I don't really hype selling the CDs, so I only sold one, to a sweet little Asian lady. I made exactly $100 (and 48 cents), and that was all in ones and fives, which means a lot of people "contributed". Unfortunately, with our cruise coming up, and a gig canceled because they're putting on an undisclosed "special event", it'll be 5 weeks before I'm back there again. So naturally, I played as long as I could, running over the 10:00 stopping time by an hour and a half.

Keith at Irvine Spectrum -- 02Sept2011

A really great night! Perfect weather finally -- not too hot, and didn't get too cold, either. My brother and his wife were there even before I got there -- I'm afraid they got to see more of me setting up than singing, but they had to get to a movie. Daleen and a friend came by with some dogs, and our neighbors from up the hill were there for a long time, too. They'd never seen me before, and were apparently impressed a bit.

There were lots of young families out, and I had a small one of my famous Kids' Dance Parties early on, and then another huge one around 8:30, with the most kids I've ever had -- probably a dozen families joined in, with all the moms, dads, grammas, and kids dancing, singing along, and taking pictures. Big fun.

I'd been recording at home to make a new "studio" CD to sell, since it's been 5 years since the current "pop tunes" one. I was surprised at how well the singing went, and how accurate my guitar playing was -- apparently playing all day, all week, makes a difference. I didn't really think I was "losing it" when I only play once a week, but I guess I am.

I (mostly) finished the CD that afternoon, recording the last two songs and putting it all together, but, although each song is OK, they're all at different volumes so it's uneven as a sequential CD. I can fix that, but didn't have time, so I only burned 4 copies. I gave one to my brother, and two more got bought during the night. After I quit, a group of people came up, bought the last CD, and told me that they were from New York and that I'd "do great in Central Park". Great idea, if a bit impractical, commute-wise.

It did get cold enough that I needed to put on my jacket towards the end, and in doing so, I dropped the mic. It's been dropped a million times before, but it's very light and it's never gotten hurt by it. But when I got back up and running, the vocal sounded *really* treble-y to me -- almost like a deliberate "singing through the telephone" effect. I asked the crowd if it was sounding funny to them, but, as always, no response, so I don't know if something is broken, or if the amp freaked out, or if I was just imagining it. I played another hour or so, feeling like it was sounding terrible, but people didn't get up and leave, and in fact, I was accumulating more and more people. But I'll have to check into what's up before my next gig in two weeks.

I sold the four new CDs, and one each of the other two, and made $77 for the night. Played for a lot of groups of kids, and lots of older couples that didn't respond much (it's that distance thing), but stayed a long time. And it was great to have the amplifier and the harmony box again, after the struggle-to-be-heard of playing acoustic-only in Laguna. I usually grumble about the hassle of setting up and tearing down the equipment, but it's clearly better than the alternative...