K&W in Laguna Beach - Friday, 29Mar2013

I was really looking forward to playing again, with the success of Tuesday night, but when we got there, the guy who had been playing loud instrumental-only guitar down the street on Tuesday (Al Sanchez) had camped out on The Corner. Warren asked him when he thought he'd be finished, but he apparently had no intentions of leaving, ever. So we went down to Acoustic Alley.

The sound is really great there, but there's much less traffic, and the sidewalk out in front of us is much less conducive to hanging around and listening. For one thing, there's no bench, and if you hang around, you're kind of impeding the flow on the narrow sidewalk. Not to mention that there's nobody that's pretty much forced to hang around once they've bought some ice cream and need to sit and eat it.

So, it was slim pickin's. We had a few people brave enough, or impressed enough, to stop, but not many. Some of them decided that the best place to listen from was *behind* us, up the corridor. Oddly, there were lots of families with kids, though, so we ended up playing a lot of kids' songs.

I kept looking out to see if Sanchez was done, and finally around 8:00, I couldn't see him anymore, and when I got closer he was cleaning the money out of his guitar case, so I went back and told Warren that he was done. It was late enough, and he'd been playing so much, that Warren decided to just go on home. I quickly packed up my stuff and rolled down there, only to find that Sanchez had left his (empty) guitar case and amp behind, and Frank told me that he had just gone to buy some batteries. I'm not sure you can "save your place" like that, but I'm not a complete jerk, so I gave up and went on home, too.

So, we really only played for 2.5 hours, while we usually play at least 4 when we're on The Corner, but we only pulled in $19. Compared to Tuesday night's $79, that really shows how much it's location, location, location. I guess Sanchez gets that, too.