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.