Keith at Laguna Beach -- 03June2012

I had so much fun last Sunday that I decided to try playing the streets of Laguna Beach again. Of course, it wasn't Memorial Day weekend anymore, and the gloom that finally burned off inland was more persistent down by the beach, so it was a pretty low turnout. I played from 4:00 to 6, and only collected $7, though the smiles and thumbs-up were plentiful.

And I seem to be getting somewhat famous -- a guy came by who recognized me from my Farmer's Market gigs, and a lady stopped to somewhat inaccurately exclaim, "We saw you at Spectrum last week! You're really good!"

Early on I was visited by another local player, Steven, who probably wanted to set up in the Alley, but since I had beaten him to it, ended up at the Corner. He's probably also frustrated by the (lack of) acoustics over there, but since he strums, he's got a lot better chance of being heard than I do.

But when I quit at 6, I decided to go down and listen to him for a while -- "maybe put on a harmony", in the words of Joni Mitchell. I got there just in time to help another guy, Noah, improvise a shoestring strap for his beat-up old guitar -- he and Steven have apparently started experimenting as a duo.

Steven is quite good, plays well and knows a lot of songs, though not so many of the words thereto. He tends to sing a line of two and make up lyrics for the rest, sometimes consisting of "And this is the second verse of this song I don't know..." kinds of stuff. It's actually kind of charming.

Noah, on the other hand, is all over the map. He knows a lot of songs, and just bashes pieces of them out, willy-nilly. They got into a Beatles jag, but Noah favors the obscure ones (like "Girl" and "I'm Only Sleeping"). Steven tried to steer toward more well-known stuff ("Standing There", etc.), and Noah knows those, too, and sings the high harmony like a champ.

I sat on the bench opposite them, and since my guitar wasn't in a case, I could just strum along and hope to catch the passing tourists in a kind of reinforcing Surround Sound. But that was tricky since they have their guitars tuned down a half-step (presumably to make the songs easier to sing). It's nearly impossible to take songs written in, say, E, and play them in E-flat. But with some creative capoing, I had a blast trying to keep up.

Steven got Noah off of the (chunks of) Beatles tunes and started on a Credence set, playing songs he knew the chords to ("Proud Mary", "Up Around the Bend", and the particularly appropriate "Willy and the Poor Boys"), teaching them to Noah, but having to look up the words on his phone balanced on top of his guitar. He understandably thought I'd know those songs, and I do, but I don't actually play any of them 'cuz Fogerty sings way too high for me.

Anyway, crazy as it was, that public jam for an hour more than made up for the previous disappointing two. But as I was leaving, there seemed to be an uptick in traffic, as the 7pm dinner crowd was arriving. I guess I'll have to figure out by experience when the best times to play happen -- maybe earlier in the afternoon for the beach crowd, and then later on for dinner time?