Keith at Irvine Spectrum -- 28Apr2012

Although it was supposed to be warmer yet than last night, a cold wind kicked up and it was quite a bit colder. But there were lots of people out -- fooled by the weatherman, I guess.

This was the "make up" gig for the double-booked Friday last week, and I chose the only open Saturday that was offered, but it meant that I had two gigs in a row. I was afraid that I'd be too tired or sore (fingers, knees, feet), but it wasn't too bad at all. I guess I'm not as old or wimpy as I think I am.

I usually don't play a Friday and Saturday on the same weekend to compare the two side-by-side, but they were interestingly different. Saturday had more people out, but they all seemed to be Doing Something and so hurrying by, where Friday's people seemed to be more Strolling, so they had time to stop and listen. Way more kids on Friday, too. Not sure why, so maybe the differences are just luck-of-the-draw and not really date-dependent, but it was a surprisingly different feel.

Indeed, expecting as many kids as the night before, I had actually worked up a new Dance song ("It's My Party" -- one of my favorites due to the very clever chord progression), but never got a chance to pull it out 'cuz there just weren't enough kids. Maybe next time.

I also decided to set up the video cameras again. I'm not really sure what I was thinking -- it's been quite a while since I've built a song video, but I don't have access to the Mac anymore, so I really can't do one anyway. I guess I'll have some raw footage to work with if I ever get ahold of a decent computer again. Or maybe I'll see what I can do on the iPad.

Anyway, I had people out there listening most of the time (and my brother and his wife for a while), and although it didn't seem like a lot of people were coming up to the table, I had $136 in the jar by the night, and had sold five "Favorites" CDs and three "Waltzing with Bears". The high point of the gig was when I was playing Eric Clapton's "Wonderful Tonight", and a couple jumped up and started slow dancing. That happens once in a while, but this time it kind of choked me up to where it was hard to finish singing the thing.

At one point late in the evening, some people were (finally!) up at the table, asking for songs and standing there to actually listen to them and scanning the list to ask for more. Other people noticed them and came up too, 'til I had a bit of a Request War going on. I spend hours just begging for someone to request a song, and then suddenly I get three groups of people fighting over me. People are funny.

Keith at Irvine Spectrum -- 27Apr2012

Finally! Wonderful weather, and the people were out accordingly. I had way more little kids dancing than ever before, to the point where I was running out of dance songs to play for them, and after the initial set was gone, a whole new set of kids showed up and I had to repeat a bunch of them.

Fortunately, I love playing for kids. I had one little thee-year-old blonde girl come over and stare right at me with a completely blank face, as only tiny kids can do. I stared right back and started up "Twinkle Twinkle", and watched her dissolve into an ear-to-ear grin, with a delighted glance back at her mom. You can just see their little brains click: "Hey! I recognize this!"

With the summer coming and the time change, I had to use the newly-printed paper copies of the iPad music book for the first couple of hours. It definitely feels primitive to have to flip though the pages looking for the right song alphabetically, but the pages/fonts seemed *huge* after I was able to switch to the iPad, so there's that trade-off...

Late in the evening, the Cutest Thing Ever happened. I was between songs and a young family stopped over at the side. The curly-headed two-year-old in the gigantic fuzzy purple coat wandered forward with a big smile and her little hand up in the air, in the universal "Hold my hand" gesture of all toddlers. I went over to the edge of the stage to meet her, and took her little hand for a couple of seconds, which seemed to be enough 'cuz she smiled even bigger and toddled back to her family. Made my night. Heck, made my *month*.

She and her big sister stayed for a long time, and were joined by a few more toddlers. Since it was finally dark enough, I crouched down and beckoned her and the rest of them over to give them some finger lights, including "Kimmy", who introduced herself with a classic quarter-turn, head-down, one-toe-up gesture that they must have studied to animate Tweety-bird, and who asked for "'Laddin and Jasmine!" over and over the rest of the night after I had played it the first time. Anyway, the lights delighted the lot of them and I got to watch them run and dance and play with them for a long time. Worth every nickel.

The night went by really fast -- by the time it was starting to feel "late", it was already 9:30. Since I'm playing two nights in a row, I didn't want to overdo this one and be too tired for the next one, so I knocked off at 10:15, the "earliest late" in a long time. It sure is nice to finally have some warm weather, which brings out the people.

Keith at "Arts Alive!" -- 21Apr2012

On Friday afternoon, I got an email from Dru, the lady who books the Mission Viejo gigs (Santa and Farmer's Market), inviting me to play on Saturday for the "Arts Alive!" event that they do. It's a little event for kids that exposes them to all kinds of arts, apparently since the schools don't, anymore. There was various booths for the kids to do painting, play with band instruments, get an airbrush tattoo, and a little violin concert in the afternoon. She offered to let me play until the violin guys started, so I did.

That made my shift from 11 to 1, and there were very few people there, but I'm getting much more OK with that 'cuz, you know, it's kinda fun just to play real loud with all the equipment. And a few appreciative people (mostly from the other booths) came by and smiled or said nice things, so not a complete loss. Also, Dru came by to buy a full set of CDs from me, which was unnecessary but nice of her.

Of course, it's worth my while in the long run to get in good with her, so she'll book me for more (paid) Farmer's Market gigs, and better shifts for Santa -- and whatever else she's in charge of that I don't know about.

Keith (not) at Irvine Spectrum - 20Apr2012

Well, I was *supposed* to play, and the weather was finally terrific so I was really looking forward to it. But when I got there, another band was already set up on the stage. And it was the "Peruvian" band, with 3 guys and a ton of equipment, so they had gotten there really early and were completely deployed.

The Maintenance guys somehow thought that the kid at the other stage wasn't really supposed to be there, and offered to send him home and let me play there. But Security brought down the booking lady's boss who confirmed that the kid was OK -- it was really a double-booking on the original stage. So I went home with a promise that he'd convince Laurie to suspend the "Only 2 per month!" rule so I could get a "make up".

And she did email to apologize and offer me some alternate dates, of which I took the only Saturday (this coming up, next one), even though I'm also booked for this coming Friday. I'm not sure I've got the stamina work a full week and then do two gigs in a row anymore, but we'll see!

The best part of the mix-up is that I've now met The Boss, and can copy him on my email exchanges with the Laurie, and maybe she'll be a little more civil -- though she did completely ignore (as usual) my email suggestion that double-booking mistakes were impossible in the old days when the schedule was publicly posted, and maybe she could think about re-implementing that. Oh well.

Keith at MV Farmer's Market - 06Apr2012

I scored a new (paid!) gig as a result of my playing for the families waiting in line to see Santa Claus at the Mission Viejo "Winter Wonderland" every year.  They've started having a Farmer's Market on Fridays in the same area between City Hall and the Library, and are having Live Music every first Friday, so I got the lady that books me for Santa to set me up to play for the "farmers".

Unfortunately, the first Friday tends to immediately follow the first Thursday (which is Laguna Artwalk), so I ended up playing two gigs with nothing but a night's sleep between them.  Not actually a big problem -- in fact it makes it a bit easier since I can leave most of the equipment in the car overnight -- but my voice wasn't really up for it at 9am, especially after singing for 3 hours the night before.

But I warmed up after a while and had a pretty good time.  Not a lot of people came by the stay and listen (more so because they hadn't booked the usual Lunch Trucks "because it's Good Friday" (Is truck food even more of a sin then than usual?!?)), but lots of folks walked by and dropped money in the jar.  I hadn't really expected to make anything in tips for this kind of thing, but ended up with $60, on top of the city's check -- not bad at all!

This was the first test of using the iPad in broad daylight, which I was afraid wasn't gonna work -- and I was right.  Not only is the image washed out in the bright light, the shiny glass makes it easier to see my own face than the songsheet.  I don't think any kind of "shade hood" would have helped enough, either.  Of course, I can and did fall back on the paper version, but the songs evolve a bit over time as I scribble performance notes and tweaks on the pages, so the iPad versions are somewhat different than the paper copies.  I'll have to print up a new set of sheets before my next sunlit gig.

As I and the farmer/vendors were packing up at 1:00, several of them came by to tell me that they liked my stuff.  And that public consensus wasn't lost on my city hall friend who will probably be inclined to book me again sometime.  Besides, I couldn't hardly be worse than the octogenarian ukulele orchestra that she booked last month!

Keith at Laguna Artwalk / Twig -- 05Apr2012

Susie let me play at her shop for the Laguna Art Walk again.  The weather was finally nice, and the auto traffic was definitely "up", though the in-store foot traffic was about the same.  It's still a lot of fun for me, though -- watching people go by the shop, even the ones that only look in and smile.  Of course, even better are the ones that slow down, stop, and decide to come inside to browse and listen.

The peak was around eight o'clock when 6 or 8 people came in.  The older guy was clearly impressed, and after reading through the list, told me confidentially that if I could play "Here Comes the Sun", his daughter's British boyfriend would be impressed.  I can play it pretty well, but only if I've been practicing the heck out of it all week, which I hadn't, so I declined.

But I offered "In My Life" as an alternative, and had the lot of them singing along, and the dad slow dancing with his wife, too.  When it was over, the mom told me it was her favorite song (hence, I suppose, the dancing), and the boyfriend came over, shoved up his sleeve, and showed me the tattoo on his wrist: "There are Places I Remember" in script.

Toward the end of the night, I watched a couple walking along across the street as the visibly pricked up their ears, spotted me, and made a beeline across the street (jay walking!) to come into the shop.  It's still unclear if they wanted to hear me better, or if they were just in need of more shopping, but they sure were determined!

24 bucks in the jar this time, a new record, but I think that most of that was Susie being needlessly generous again -- just letting me play there is "gift" enough!

Keith at Irvine Spectrum -- 31March2012

The weather had been nice all week, and I was hoping for a big turnout at Spectrum, but Saturday it turned all cloudy and threatening. It wasn't really all that cold, but it did send me packing in a light rain/drizzle about 9:20. (But at least it wasn't a repeat of the scheduled but totally-rained-out St. Pat's Day gig two weeks ago. Because of that, it's been 6 weeks (!) since I've played Spectrum.)

Got a really late start, too -- after I'd gotten 3/4 set up, I noticed that the power was dead, and to make matters worse, my phone's battery was also dead so I couldn't call Maintenance. I put the obvious valuables back in the suitcase, and carried my guitar and iPad out to find somebody. By the time they got it working it was already 6:40, which, with the early "called for rain" end time, made it my shortest Spectrum gig ever.

But fun. Seems like I had a few people standing around the sides of the stage most of the night, and one little dancer that dragged her parents back for more 3 or 4 times over the evening (and kept bringing me "another money"). I was another big Persian Social night, and I had a bunch of their little kids hanging around, so I brought out my give-away shakers (plastic easter eggs with hard red beans taped inside) and gave away 4. As I had suspected, they were a bit too young to get any rhythm going, but whatever.

After a while, I decided to also give them some of my "finger lights" (little LED flashlights in various colors). There were 4 kids when I started giving them out, but suddenly another half-dozen appeared from nowhere. But that's OK -- the kids were having a great time running around playing with them, and while they cost me a quarter apiece, the parents invariably put many times that into the jar, so it's win-win for me and the kids.

First outing for Daleen-recommended, newly-learned, Green Day song "Good Riddance" (a.k.a. "I Hope You Had the Time of Your Life"). I was skeptical, because it's a bit too high for me to sing in the original key, and has a distinctive guitar sound via a particular altered chord. Transposing such a thing is usually impossible, but I figured out a clever way to make it work. And the song seemed to go over pretty well, so I guess the effort wasn't in vain.

Weirdest part -- a guy I recognized from before came up and again asked for some ELO or Bee Gees, and again left a fiver even though I was unable to oblige (he settled, both times, for Neil Diamond's "Play Me"). I had actually taken a look at some Bee Gees tunes in the interim, and although none of them called to me much, I guess I'll have to learn one before the next gig there in three weeks.

Anyway, I came home with $87, even with such a short playing time. That and the joy on the kids' faces as they ran and played with the Finger Lights made it a great night, and worth the electrocution risk as I finished up "If I Fell" in the rain...