It was a nice warm day, so I was hoping that some people would be out, but it turned really cold, and they weren't. I played some popular stuff for a while, but nobody really wanted to stop to listen, so I started playing some obscure stuff from the "Other" list. That was actually really fun.
And sometimes I neglect songs that I don't (or didn't) think "worked", but actually do sound good out in the Real World. Like "I'll Never Find Another You", "Wichita Lineman", "Mister Bojangles", and "Trouble"" which sounded pretty good last night. OTOH, there are several that deserve their place in obscurity, not because they're bad songs, but because my rendition is sub-par (I'm lookin' at you, "Down at the Twist and Shout" and "I've Got a Name"). I guess it's also good to discover where I need more practice...
Not quite a new record low, tips-wise, at eight bucks. Or thirteen, if you count the cool New Zealand five dollar bill. (It's got a window! And Mount Everest! And a little tractor! And a penguin on the back!)
I got an email from a guy who saw me at Spectrum, and he also plays at malls and gave me the email address of the lady who books Long Beach Towne Center, Riverside Plaza, and Chino Spectrum. I emailed her my interest and webpage address, and she immediately booked me to fill a cancellation in Long Beach, just on the basis of the MP3s and videos there. Cool!
That all happened Thursday, and on Saturday, even before I'd played the gig, she offered me some more gigs, so I got two more at Long Beach and one in Riverside (which pays actual money, which is good 'cuz it's pretty far away!).
Long Beach was interesting. There's a huge permanent stage, with cool roof/sails and real lighting. And they send, incredibly, a Sound Guy with really nice equipment. Big speakers, and a big monitor "wedge" pointed back at me. It sounded *great* -- noticeably (and covet-inducingly) better than my stuff.
But it's all set up along a cross-traffic walkway, across which is the food court. People who wanted to listen would stop and stand in the middle of the walkway, or sit at the tables of the food court, or along the raised edge of its floor, or on the wheelchair ramp, or on the stairs themselves. None of those places are very close, or inviting, but I snagged a pretty good number of people to hang around anyway.
It feels a lot like the (now extinct) food court stage at Irvine Spectrum -- more of a "wander by" kind of crowd than the "standing in the middle of traffic" feel of the new stage at Spectrum. The other strange part is that they have two bands per night, one from 6 to 7, then an hour to change out the equipment, and a second band from 8 to 9. I was the first one, and maybe more of the older folks are out for the "early shift", so a lot of people stopped to listen a bit.
Long Beach is pretty close to my mom's house, and my aunt and uncle live really close, so they came and stayed the whole hour. That made it easy to get started in this unfamiliar place, to have some friendly faces to sing to, right from the start. After a while, a lady sat down who was really liking my stuff -- she'd applaud after the first few notes of a song when she'd recognize what it was going to be. James Taylor gets that for every song, but it sure doesn't happen for me, that I can remember! When I introduced "The Boxer", she squealed and clapped at just the name of it. And I was about to make a joke about nobody knowing that song's real name...
When 7:00 rolled around, I was prepared to quit (despite it seeming like I'd only just started), but the sound guy was OK with my going over some, since the next guy wasn't even there yet. That was nice because when I said that I was going to have to quit, someone started shouting "Encore!".
I played one or two more, and then the sound guy gave me a "three song warning". I did "Carolina In My Mind", and then "Desperado", and then realized that those are two of the longest songs I know. I thought I'd better do a short one for the last song, but someone in the audience shouted out "Hotel California" -- which I had done as my opening song (like always), but figured it was a good closing song, too, despite it being, whoops, probably the *longest* song in the book. Fortunately, the sound guy didn't seem to notice or mind.
So I probably only got to play for an hour and twenty minutes, and made $50 in tips (not counting the *outrageous* over-tip by my not-so-sneaky mom), so that's pretty good. It does seem a shame to go to the trouble of driving up there and getting all set up, only to play for an hour or so...
Afterwards, I packed up as quick as I could and had dinner with my family in the food court. They went home after that, but I wanted to see what the second band sounded like, and what kind of reception they'd get. It was a young guy doing that hipster neo-folkie kind of stuff, and, well, I was the only one listening. He played and sang OK, but it all sounded the same, and wasn't familiar to anyone (originals, maybe?).
Anyway, it was cool to have a new place to play, despite the quirks. And it's great to be "on the list" for some more gigs at even more places. And, of course, having gigs at places makes you more appealing to yet *other* places, so hopefully I can parlay this into even more new gigs!
Three young guys were hanging around, listening, so I asked them if they wanted to pick a song off the list. I assumed they were just local high school kids, until they started to talk -- they had French accents even more outrageous than John Cleese's. Turns out they were from Quebec, and had *driven* out. I felt bad that they were about to get some decidedly non-Californian weather, but I suppose that they're pretty well acclimated to cold and wet.
They asked for a few songs, and seemed to run out of ideas, so I proposed doing some Neil Young, 'cuz, "He's Canadian." One of the kids looked at me and said, "Eee's note Can-aid-ee-aan." Um, OK. Forget I mentioned it, Pierre.
A young couple sat down and asked if I knew any James Taylor. I said that I know *lots* of James Taylor, well-known and obscure, and started listing some famous ones. They picked one, but an older guy took me literally and asked for "Copperline", which, Ha!, I know. Challenge accepted! Got a big round of applause, too, even though I'm sure most of the people there had never heard it before.
It was quite nice during the day, but as soon as the sun went down, the arctic air started coming in, and it got cold, fast. I was about to call it a day when four high-school girls came and sat down, and got very excited when I invited them to choose some songs.
After a song or three, one of them picked up a CD and asked me how much they were. I said "five bucks", and she complained back to her friends that she "had three bucks". I told her that she could have one for three, but it turned out that she had meant that she *had* three bucks, but didn't have them anymore. So I said, "Well, OK, you can just have a CD", which, of course, turned into each of them just having one, so I "sold out" all four that I'd brought, for free. I said, "OK, but you all have to go "Like" my Facebook page", but none of them have. Oh well. It was worth it just having them stop by to listen and be so excited. And it's flattering that they even *wanted* CDs.
After a while, somebody's mom pulled up, and they all tumbled into the car and were gone. I was freezing, hungry, and, having played four hours plus four and a half the night before, decided that it was probably time to go home.
Nice weather again, so lots of people out and streaming past. The new comfy furniture arrangement isn't really conducive to watching me, but some people were brave enough to spin one of the chairs around. And lots of couples figured out that the chairs are big enough for lap-sitting.
I discovered a new trick -- if you scatter business cards around the table, a lot more of them will disappear than if they're only in a neat stack in the little holder. Now I gotta decide: why do I want to "get rid" of business cards? Presumably, people take them to get my phone number, webpage address, and Facebook page. But so far, two days later, nobody's called or "liked" my page, so...
But I guess you gotta play the odds -- the more people that have the info, the more likely that someone will up and use it. I suppose I'd better order some more cards.
I had this nice old lady come up and, between songs, ask me incredulously, "It says to put five dollars in the jar and just take a CD?!?" Um, yup, that's pretty much exactly what it says, so I said, "Sure!", and she said, "*Any* of them?!?". I'm not sure why she'd think that one would be more than the others, so I answered a different question and told her what the general contents of each of them is (i.e., "my best stuff", "kids music", and "classics"). She went back to her table and dug around in her purse for a bit, came back and took one (some?), pointed to the money she'd put in the jar, I smiled and nodded (since I was, by then, in a song), and she toddled off. I guess she thought it was the bargain of the century. Maybe it is. Or maybe she's just not used to self-serve shopping...
I gave a little blue fingerlight to a tiny boy, and his mom put it on his finger. He generally kept it pointed it at the ground, so his mom started stomping on the blue spot. He decided that looked like fun, and started to try to step on it, too, except since it was strapped to his finger, when he'd move toward it, it would move away. It was like that act where a clown kicks his hat every time he bends over to pick it up, only this was for real.
At one point, two couples were standing right out in front of me, and I was digging around the book for the next song and one of the ladies called out, "Play a love song -- they just got engaged!" I'm *totally* prepared for that (I even have a sub-table of contents of "Love Songs"), so I went for "Wonderful Tonight", which always has the ladies swooning. The engaged couple started slow dancing, and their friends joined in too. Sweet.
The last hour or so was really great, lots of people settled in and actually listening, requesting, and clapping. I like it when there's lots of people, but when there are fewer people, it gets quieter, and the remaining people tend to pay more attention. Or maybe the ones that care to pay attention *become* the ones who stay. Either way, I got to play some stuff with some finesse, and got some great response. Surprisingly, Lionel Richie's "Hello", which I've recently re-worked-out, got the biggest ovation. I was literally surprised by it. I guess my new guitar arrangement really *is* better than the old one.
We did our "standing" Tuesday night in Laguna, not expecting much, and not getting much, either. But that was OK, I took the opportunity to play a whole bunch of songs that I never usually do. For some reason (the dextromethorphan?) I was having some kind of weird clarity of thought thing going on, so my guitar playing was really accurate, and I could remember how to play songs that I haven't tried in years. It was really fun to have that "infallible" feeling.
A couple dozen people walked through, but our buddy Homeless Frank was really the whole audience all night. He kept telling us how much he liked "the new stuff", maybe because he's already heard "the old stuff" a million times.
At one point a nice lady walked right up, looked at my sign, and said, "Keith, you have a really beautiful voice!" I said, "Thanks, I got it from my dad" (as I always do), and asked her if she wanted to pick a song. She said that anything I wanted to sing was fine with her (as they frequently do), so I fired up "Leaving on a Jet Plane", which tends to "work" with ladies in her age range. And it did -- she stood there smiling at me for the whole song, then thanked me, put something in the jar, and walked across the street to climb into the passenger side of a waiting, running, car. I guess she liked me well enough to make her husband just wait...
The weather report said "sunny", but it wasn't. But I was rarin' to go down there anyway, so I presumed that it would clear up later. I was supposed to meet Warren at 12:45, hoping to get the jump on Tom again, but he outsmarted us and was already occupying The Corner when I drove by at 12:40. But the clouds were breaking up, there was a Craft Faire going on across PCH in the Main Beach park, and there were lots of people out, so I decided to park and figure something out. (Warren slept in after a late night and never did show up.)
I wandered around a bit, spying on Tom (who just seemed to be hitting his stride), and April singing away in the somewhat-distant Second Best spot: Acoustic Alley. I walked across the street to check out the Craft Faire, hoping to find some obvious spot to maybe set up over there, where lots of people were meandering. But there wasn't one, and I wouldn't have been comfortable setting up my illicit amplification in a new untested place if there were. At one point, it looked like Tom was gone, so I quickly came back across the street, only to find him sitting down in place, taking a cig break. Foiled again!
But he certainly has as much right to the spot as I do, so I gave up and set my stuff up at the distant-third spot: by the weird green ceramic spiral sculpture/bench thingie. But after about an hour, a light rain started up. I held out for a while, but eventually it got to be too wet to be out there with the electronics, so I packed the stuff up and put it back in the van. Tom is strictly acoustic, so he held out a bit longer than I did, but even if he had wanted to keep playing, the rain had made sure that there was no one to play for, so he gave up after a while.
I hung out under an awning until I was sure the rain had really stopped (20-30 minutes), re-fed the parking meter, and grabbed the opportunity at The Corner. Thanks, rain!
And after the rain blew over it got really nice out. People reappeared, and I had a great run for the rest of the afternoon. Lots of families, and people speaking outrageous foreign languages and taking my picture. I do (deliberately) play my part in the Laguna Street Scene, wearing my big top hat and singing "American Songs".
There was a tenner in the tip jar, and lots of fives (and ones, of course), for total of $72, which I'm pretty sure is a new record for street corner work. Two 13-year old girls came by, went into the ice cream shop, re-emerged with ice cream cones, and put five bucks, each, into the tip jar on their way back past. I guess Dad isn't getting any change back...
Later in the evening, two college girls came by near the end of "Wonderful Tonight", and started to dance to it. One girl was talking about doing some "Tahitian dancing", but the other one wanted to hear "Georgia on My Mind", which wasn't exactly conducive. After that, the Polynesian girl wanted me to play "Wonderful Tonight" *again*, so she could Hula to it. Didn't make much sense to me, but I'm in for whatever, and she squirmed around nicely, attracting a bit of attention and throwing in some hand-signs for the words, like "brushes her long blonde hair". There doesn't seem to be a traditional Hula sign for "car keys", though.
Warren and I had scheduled a gig in Laguna the day before when it was nice out, but then it turned all cold and gloomy. If I had been going down solo, I probably would have just called it off, but I couldn't leave Warren hanging so I went anyway.
And it turned out pretty great! A cold, gloomy weeknight in February. Naturally, there weren't many people out, but it seems like, when they're the only ones passing by at a given time, people get more friendly. The passer-by to tippers ratio definitely seems to go way up, at least.
Quite early on, we dragged in a cute little 5-year-old girl in a Hello Kitty hoodie and her mom and grandma. I immediately switched to kids' songs, and did 3 or 4 in a row for her/them. It always blows their little minds when I do "Twinkle, Twinkle". They are clearly not expecting to actually recognize anything out here in the Real World.
After they left, a guy came by and sat down on the bench. I asked him if he wanted to pick a song, but he said that he was just there waiting on his wife to finish shopping. I said, "Oh, like the couch they put outside the lingerie department", and he said, "Exactly". But he was there for quite a while, and started talking to us, and telling us about the James Taylor and CSN concerts that he'd seen back in Michigan. He finally asked for "Suite: Judy Blue Eyes" once his wife appeared. I think he's the one that left the tenner in the jar.
Later, there was a pack of middle-aged ladies, escorting a younger lady who was "from Norway". They sat and listened for several songs, and Miss Norway requested "Hallelujah". One of the other ladies (mom, aunts?) asked for "Under the Boardwalk" which seemed slightly out of place on such a cold evening, but whatever.
As they finally had to move on, I gave my new Norwegian fan a copy of my CD, which she seemed thrilled by. (I told her escorts that I only did it so she'd take it back with her after which I could claim to be "world famous".) Much later, as we were packing up, they came back by and she ran up and asked me to autograph it!
Anyway, we had a nice evening with a most-of-the-time revolving audience, and pulled in $36, which was shocking since I was wondering on the drive down there if this was gonna be the first night where I didn't make back the $2 parking meter fee...
The new batteries are here! And since I had a pretty good day last Sunday, and it looked to be a nice weather day, it seemed like a great chance to see what they can do.
Of course, it turned out that it was also Super Bowl Sunday, but we decided that Laguna people probably aren't into that kind of thing, so we went anyway. And there were, indeed, lots of people out. So many that it started to feel a bit like last summer, with throngs of people streaming heedlessly past. Still, you can't blame people for having somewhere else to be, and the more people that come by, the more chance that some of them will hear something they like.
Unfortunately, in the daytime, the parking meters will only allow a 3 hour maximum, so we started at 1:00, and had to quit at 4. I was very happy to find that I covered the whole time with only one of the new batteries -- success! And since I bought two new batteries, I presumably now have access to more than 6 hours of amplifier time, which is longer than I can stand there singing anyway.
The only bummer was that another street musician, Tom, showed up as we were setting up. Warren told him that we'd be playing for quite a while, until 3 or 4, and he said that that's OK, he was just hanging out. Which he proceeded to do The. Whole. Time. He just sat on the middle of the bench (mostly precluding other people from sitting there), and listened, for the whole three hours.
I've heard him play before, and he's pretty good. So it was a bit intimidating to have him there, but I guess it also kept me on my best game. But he didn't clap, didn't smile, didn't comment, and kind of "dragged down the room". I kept thinking that he'd get bored, or hungry, or something, but he just sat there.
Oh well. We still pulled in $54, even with Tom's "chilling effect" in place, which is a Darn Good Day for down on a street corner. Definitely beats watching some football game on TV.
Finally, warm weather! I arrived to find that they'd messed with the layout again -- there are new comfy chairs around the planter boxes, which, apparently, led them to put up a tiny stage -- 8x8 instead of the previous 16x16 one. Fortunately, that's plenty for just me, but I don't know what the giant-synth-setup guy or the 3-man Peruvian band are gonna do...
I had had a really terrible cold since Tuesday, and didn't really know if I'd be able to sing at all, but I was feeling a bit better, and I'd already paid the $50 "setup fee", and I don't know what her policy is for last minute cancellations, so I chugged some cough syrup, loaded up a huge bottle of Mountain Dew, and went anyway. It was tough going for the first hour or two, but after that, it seemed to clear up and I was singing just fine. I only crashed and burned one song in a coughing fit all night.
Lots of people out on this fine night, and even more because of the Winter Formal kids wandering around in large packs, microscopic dresses, and outrageously high heels. I guess they were just killing time before their actual event started somewhere else, 'cuz after a while, they disappeared altogether. Disappointingly, only a few of them had time to listen to and/or request some songs -- usually I get more connection from the teens, but they were probably distracted.
I finally had a recurrence of the believed-extinct Kids' Party, helped along mightily by some parent's clapping along to the rhythm to the Chuck Berry, causing others to join in. Why doesn't this happen more often?!? It *really* dragged other people in. I'm not sure how to get that started on my own, though -- once the music starts, my hands are kinda busy...
Anyway, I must not have sounded *too* bad, since I sold 5 CDs and pulled in $143. I think I actually had a lot more listeners than it seemed, since people can now camp out in the comfy chairs and listen without seeming to be specifically engaging with me, and there were lots of people in those chairs for long stretches. Or maybe they were just tired...
Not quite a new record low, tips-wise, at eight bucks. Or thirteen, if you count the cool New Zealand five dollar bill. (It's got a window! And Mount Everest! And a little tractor! And a penguin on the back!)
