Keith at Irvine Spectrum -- 28Jan2012

Warmer, with gusty winds, but more people out.  Not a lot of interaction again, but I think it's finally sinking in that, especially as far away as the people are in this setup, it's really my fault.  I need to be talking a lot more, even though it's tough when you seem to be talking to yourself.  But as long as I'm just up there playing song after song, I'm seen as background music, not a person.  Definitely gotta work on that.

I had lots of little kids though (including the little dynamo pictured in this multiple-exposure), and from 10 'til 11, finally there were some nice people getting into it.  I had one guy come up to read through the list, but since I was in the middle of a song, he stood around awkwardly for a while and finally decided to write his request on one of my cards.  He kind of showed it to me and then tossed it on the ground near me, and went back to his seat.  When I finished the song, I picked up the card, and had to laugh -- it was "Hotel California", of course.  It just seemed like a lot of effort on his part for something that was essentially foregone.  I think about half the requests I get are for that one, and another quarter are for "Hey Jude".

I used my even-more-evolved iPad-based songbook again, and it's definitely working out well.  I specifically did some lots-of-words (so small font) songs, and had no trouble reading the words, wearing my blended bifocal "gig glasses".  The ability to get to new songs quickly is really great, and the multiple "views" of the list -- by name, artist, capo setting, etc. -- is really useful.  And the wind couldn't flip the pages on me, either.  Still worried about view-ability in the summer sun, though.

It's kind of freaking me out to have these nights with almost no applause, but then finding $75 in the jar.  It definitely indicates some kind of social issue with the distance (physical and social) that keeps people from "appreciating" me with simple clapping, but they do come up with their hard-earned cash.  They obviously like what they're hearing, but are somehow unable to show it by clapping after the songs.  Weird.

Keith at Irvine Spectrum -- 14Jan2012

A pretty fun gig -- nobody wanted to stay out in the cold for very long, but I had lots of nice, if short, interactions.

Started off inauspiciously, when my D-string tuner peg button snapped right in two as I tried to turn it past an internal obstruction in the sealed gearbox, before I'd even started playing.  Fortunately, it was pretty close to in-tune when it broke, 'cuz I had to play the whole night with it exactly there.  These are my second set of tuners and they've always had this grinding issue from day one.  I thought it would lessen over time, but it hasn't.  Fortunately, I have 6 spare buttons on the old set somewhere...

It was also the first outing for my "songbook in the iPad" experiment.  I combined all the Word doc song sheets for the songs in current rotation into a big PDF, with a hyperlinked Table of Contents.  The advantages over paper are many: much smaller and lighter to carry, much faster to "flip" to the desired song, no booklight needed, almost infinitely expandable with no added bulk, 

The main disadvantage is that the screen is smaller than a piece of paper, so the words and chords are harder to read.  This was my main worry, but I put on my "gig glasses" (blended bifocals for distance and "3 feet away"), and it worked out fine.  Probably not as easy to read as the paper version, but serviceable.

Also, it's tougher (but not impossible) to scribble on the sheet with hints, notes, diagrams, arrows, etc.  I incorporated most of these from the existing pages when I created the PDF version, but I do tend to need to add stuff on the fly during gigs.  But I have a PDF viewer that allows annotation, so it'll be clumsy but do-able.  And of course, creating and maintaining the PDF itself will be a lot of work -- adding songs will be theoretically easy, but hard when the links get broken, as they inevitably do.  Just getting this "proof of concept" main list working right was a lot more trouble than it should have been...

I was also worried about battery life, but I played from 6:30 until 11, and only went down 25%, so that'll be fine (at that low level of backlighting, anyway).  It occurred to me, the next morning, that this solution is OK for indoors and nighttime, but may be completely unworkable for daytime (and "starts in the day") gigs.  I don't know if some kind of sun shade might make it readable, or if I'll have to maintain a fallback paper copy (with a reduced list?).

Anyway, it was pretty successful, so I'll definitely pursue and improve on the idea.  One great advantage not listed above is that I actually have multiple linked Contents lists: Everything Alphabetical, By Capo (I tend to try to play songs with the same capo setting in a row so I don't have to stop and retune so much), Kids' Songs, Dance Tunes, and By Artist.  At the very top is a List of Lists, so I can quickly get to the one I need.  In real life, this worked out even better than I'd hoped, so I'll think about even more ways of categorizing the songs, since the "What to play next?" question is of the toughest parts of this thing.  Maybe "Age Group", or a separate "Late Night" list?

It was pretty cold, so not a lot of people out, but I had plenty of people come by for brief periods.  Some young girls specifically asked for Justin Bieber, which had happened a dozen times last summer, just before I actually broke down and learned his big hit, and hadn't happened since.  Some older teenage boy came by and started asking for a series of kids' songs, which struck me as stranger and stranger until I figured out that he had someone else (girlfriend? little sister?) on the other end of his phone.  Concert by proxy?

But tips were up from previous weeks ($71), and friendly people are starting to come out, so I'm looking forward to springtime.

Keith at Laguna Artwalk / Twig -- 05Jan2012

My old friend from high school, Susie, has recently opened a cute gift shop in Laguna Beach, which hosts a city-wide "art walk" every first Thursday. The shops stay open late and people walk from store to store, sampling wine and cheese, and, frequently, live music. I offered (or self-invited) myself to play at Susie's store ("Twig"), not really knowing what to expect, but it was pretty fun.

There are a lot of musicians (of varying quality) playing on the sidewalks in Laguna, and I've tried it a few times with Warren. But there's a (understandable) city ordinance against using amplifiers on the street, so I (A) can't use my harmony box, and (B) can't be heard. People who do play on the street necessarily play as loud as they can, using either multiple guitars, and/or strumming vigorously. I'm not much of a strummer, and feel less than musical when I do so, so it's a problem for me.

But inside a shop, I can use my amp and harmony box, with the trade-off that there's a lot less traffic. It was pretty empty at first, but around 7:00 people started showing up. At one point there were maybe 8 or 10 people in the little shop. It didn't seem like much to me, but Susie was thrilled with this much traffic, which she generously attributed to the music and not the probably-more-responsible Art Walk event.

And people were very friendly. Everybody says hello, and half of them were friends of Susie's from their kids' schools or church or something. And they were appreciative of the music, led by Susie's consistent applause or "Whoo!" at the end of every song, even if she and I were the only ones in the store. Some people even seemed to be staying around to hear more.

The highlight was a young lady, Erica, that Susie's kids had gone to high school with and Susie knew to be a musical-theater singer. We fired up "Part of Your World" from "The Little Mermaid", which I know how to play in the original "girl key", and she did a terrific job with it.

Presumably, this will have been the lightest traffic of any Art Walk, and it'll get better as it gets warmer. I'll definitely be back next month, if only to have somewhere to play that's indoors. It's definitely fun for me, and it's probably a "win" for Susie.