Keith at Mission Viejo Santa's Workshop -- 19Dec2012

The lady who books the Farmer's Market and the Santa Claus line gigs was at some function where a 9-year-old kid sang, and since she's a gramma, he was the cutest thing in the world. So she decided it would be really cool if I would let him come down and sing for the Santa line, and asked me if I would do that. Of course, that's a lot easier to say than do.

He wanted to do "Jingle Bells", "Winter Wonderland", and "Silent Night", which I don't actually do, but it's trivial to play, so no problem. But clearly, his vocal range was going to be different than mine, and I had no way of knowing how different. I can transpose songs, but only if I know where to transpose to, so I had to invite the kid over to figure it out. He sings OK -- and he at least has the guts to go ahead and sing in public -- but he's no child star (like, apparently, his manager/gramma thinks).

I had him meet me down there and do his songs first. He did OK, but kept backing off of the mic so he couldn't be heard much. It was mostly a waste of time, his and mine. He didn't impress anybody in the line, the booking lady wasn't there anyway, and the only real result was that the other kids (and moms) got the impression that I was letting kids come up and sing -- an idea that I really didn't need to get planted out there.

I fended off most of the requests until much later when a little girl (maybe 8?) walked up and asked if she could sing "Santa Baby". Since I know it, but can't sing it (it needs to be a girl), I fetched the mic that Wade had been using and let her try it. Of course my sheet was in the wrong key for her little voice, but I quickly added a bunch of capo and she sang the first verse -- and walked away!

The rest of the night went pretty well, and the line was really long. Turns out that I was misinformed and although there was another weekend before Christmas, this was the last night of Santa. Until next year...