K&W in Laguna Beach -- 15Mar2013

I thought I'd see how a Friday night looks down on the corner -- should be better than a Tuesday anyway, right?

I was worried that we wouldn't get The Corner, but when I got there, there were no other musicians, but there were three Greenpeace kids, trying to talk to people about the whales, tigers, etc. I told one of them that I was sorry to blow them out, but that I was gonna set up and play some music, and he said, "Great! Even better for us!" OK, if you think so...

So I set up and played, but kept it turned way down so they could be heard. Some people stopped to talk to them, but for the hour or so that they were there while we were playing, we made zero tips, and no one stopped to listen. Now, that's not completely unusual for the first hour, but still. People are sympathetic to Greenpeace, but most of them don't want to stop and talk about it...

Anyway, it was fun after that. Silly Patty showed up, and pretended the painter's palette she had bought was a tambourine, while I played "Mister Tambourine Man". She's always fun to have around. But the most fun was when the "Woo Girls" (so called because almost anything causes them to throw their hands in the air and scream "Woo!") showed up.

I'm guessing that they were en route from one bar to another, but the crossing light held them up, and I snagged them by offering to let them choose a song. One of them asked if I knew "Trouble", but she didn't mean the Cat Stevens song that I know, she meant the Taylor Swift one that I don't. But I said that I did know Swift's "Mean", and they were thrilled to dance and sing along for that one. And, of course, when there are party girls dancing, other people stop to join in or at least watch the fun. We had a pretty good crowd, all of a sudden.

I played a few more songs for them, interrupted by one of them being hijacked by a spun-out homeless guy recognizing her as his nurse from the hospital, and she had to call a cab and then pre-pay the driver to have him taken back there, and then convince him that the cab driver was a nice guy and wouldn't hurt him to get him into the cab. Crazy stuff -- and then she was right back to "Woo!".