Keith at Laguna Beach -- 31Dec2012

I thought that maybe there would be New Year's Eve party people out on the streets downtown to play for, so I worked up "Auld Lang Syne", got dressed like I was going to the snow, and headed down at 10:00. I figured that I could drive past The Corner, and if nobody was out, I could just cruise on back home.

But of course, once I was down there, and since a really close parking spot presented itself, I stopped to check it out. There was a guy with a guitar on the opposite corner, trading songs with a girl on accordion. She had this really great style of just pulling on long chords and singing over them -- reminded me of some of Steeleye Span's stuff, though I didn't recognize any of the songs. No one else was out, so I stalled a while and decided, since I was already there...

There was hardly any car traffic that late, so it was unusually quiet. I'm pretty conscious of not stepping on other performers' sound space, so I set up my rig, but kept it turned down really quiet. There were lots of dressed up people zooming by. I have no idea how the girls were surviving in those micro party dresses in the 40-degree weather. Maybe that's why they went by so fast...

It was pretty discouraging at first, but after a while the other performers left, so I was able to turn it up a bit, and then people were noticing me more. But they were all on their way from one bar to another, and it was clearly not a Party out on the corner. Still, I got several of those people who rush by, deliberately not making eye contact, and intending to just burn past -- but who pull up, apparently realizing "Hey, this guy's pretty good!", and digging out a buck or two to drop before the Walk light changes. Those are always very gratifying.

I did have one young couple sit down to wait out the end of the song I was in the middle of, specifically to come up and tell me that they had seen me a year and a half earlier at the food court at Foothill, on their first date. That was pretty sweet.

As midnight approached, people started scurrying past even more, apparently trying to get to the Right Place when the time came. I could tell when midnight hit, 'cuz suddenly the noise from the nearby bars and restaurants coalesced into "Five, four, three...", just like it used to do for the evening rocket launches when I lived down Florida.

I fired up "Auld Lang Syne" as it hit midnight, which sounded pretty cool, fingerpicked and with harmony, and just ran through it in a loop for a while. I missed seeing the new year in with Daleen, but it was kinda cool to be ringing it in doing something I love, even if I was only singing to the trees along Forest Avenue.

I hung out for a while more, playing for the people as they gave up and went back to their cars or started trying to hail taxis. Got some great comments, and $15, from the "I love you, man" crowd. Lots of "Happy New Years", and one girl grumbled as she went by, "I just wanna stop and listen to *this* guy -- he's the best singer I've heard all night", but I guess she was overruled by having to keep up with her fast-walking friends.

Anyway, by 12:45 or so, I was just too cold to play any more -- I couldn't feel the strings or frets with my left hand, and couldn't fingerpick with my stiff right-hand fingers, so I was making too many mistakes. I had played "Mister Tambourine Man" a while earlier, and the lines "My hands can't feel to grip, and my toes too numb to step" struck home.

Happy New Year.