Keith at Fete de la Musique -- 16June2012

At Art Walk last week, a couple of people mentioned the "Fete de la Musique", which I'd never heard of, but turns out to be Laguna's annual street music festival. With only 9 days notice, and almost no web presence, I didn't think I could get in, but the organizer responded to my last-ditch email, must have liked what he saw on my webpage, and offered me a slot -- as long as I didn't need electricity.

I was already planning to build a battery-powered street-stealth amp rig, so I took the offer, and quickly finished the project, but using my real amp, not the little hide-able one. That involved buying a new battery for my battery-powered (but long dead) amp, and trying to figure out a way to power the AC adapter-powered harmony box and wireless mic receiver.

I got it all working by Friday, but that didn't give me any time to do battery-life tests on anything, so I wasn't sure if or when they'd die on me. I had to prepare to play the gig with fall-back setups for every possible failure -- all the way down to just playing acoustically, me and my guitar.

So I was completely prepared for something to go wrong, but it all worked perfectly, and with battery time to spare. And a pretty good time it was, too. I was stationed at the corner of PCH and Ocean, right across from Main Beach and the volleyball court, so I had a lot of foot traffic. And, unfortunately, a lot of car traffic, which wasn't half bad compared to the all-too-frequent Harley traffic... (I wonder what the Harley people are going to do when all vehicles are electric. Play recordings of loud obnoxious combustion engines as they go by? Amplify some 60-cycle hum?)

Anyway, it was fun to play out there and actually be audible. A lot of people breezed on by, but a lot of people stopped to listen. And a lot of people in cars stuck at the red light would roll down their windows to see what I was up to, and clap or give me the thumbs-up as they went past.

I had two little girls who dragged their parents to a stop and stayed to dance for 20 minutes or more. And the cute kids were a magnet for all the grammas going by, so I developed a little crowd for a while there.

And for a while I had a guy who was obviously not hitting on all cylinders, trying to sing along on these songs he clearly loved, but he'd long since lost his ability to keep stuff like that sorted out in his head. So I'd sing a line, which would remind him of the words, and he'd shout out the last word or two in the gap before the next line. It was sweet that he was so moved, but also *incredibly* distracting, and I had a real challenge keeping the song together. He "sang along" in his disjointed way for a half-dozen songs, and finally decided to go back to what he had come down for: holding up a sign in the "Legalize Marijuana" demonstration across the street at Main Beach. Dude, spun-out guys like you are *not* doing The Cause any favors!

The worst part, though, was when I was all done and had to drag the Equipment Choo-Choo back up the cliff to my car. Indeed, dreading the climb, I kept playing as long as I could, just waiting for it to cool down enough. I had to drag it backwards most of the way, stopping every 30 feet (that's 10 feet vertically) to rest. About 3/4 of the way there I decided that the equipment was cheaper than a heart attack, so I tucked it inside a vacant carport, walked the rest of the way to my car, and came back for it. Next time I have the full raft of stuff with me, I'm paying for parking at street level!