Keith at Don the Beachcomber -- Saturday, 15June2013

We had a kind of spontaneous Reunion dinner of the "Mariners", my old "song and dance" group (now called a "show choir", like on "Glee", but not nearly so elaborate) from high school. It was sparked by Dirck (who now goes by "Todd"), and who has been playing clubs for the last 35 years. He had a special show planned for the next Saturday, and invited me to come and get up to sing a few songs.

I got there promptly at 8:00 when he said that they would start, 'cuz I thought that maybe he had me in mind as the "opening act". But he really wanted me to go on far later, so I ended up sitting there, getting more and more nervous waiting for him to call my name, for almost 3 hours.

But it's his show, and I was glad to get to play, whenever. I got up and told everyone that I was pretty nervous to be on an actual stage, since I usually play in outdoor malls and street corners, and maybe it'd help if they'd all get up and walk quickly past the stage, carefully avoiding eye contact...

I started with "You've Got a Friend", which I can play in my sleep, but of course, not when I'm awake and under pressure. After that, I got a couple of little girls up and gave them bubble wands to blow bubbles at the front of the stage while I played "Over the Rainbow". That went over well with the crowd, though I think I may have set up my own upstaging with those cute girls...

Then Nancy insisted on my doing "Sweet Baby James", which I do well enough, but not very often because it's just not very impressive. But she likes me to do it so she and Dirck can sing harmonies. Which they did.

I finished with Jackson Browne's "These Days", which I usually do really well, but we were having a lot of feedback trouble at first, and to solve it, Dirck had turned the monitor way down, so I couldn't hear myself well enough to really push it. Still, it went over well enough, I think.

At least everybody told me that I did great. My sister was there, and David from the Mariners. Since I had my "music bag" with me, I pulled out a CD and gave it to him. He was apparently impressed by it, and in return for it has offered to get me a pair of designer jeans (his business is doing the special "washes" for jeans manufacturers). He asked for my size, and sent me the webpage of the guy he's gonna get them from, so I looked, and they're $375 and up! For a pair of jeans! So I guess since I charge $5 for a CD, if he actually comes through, I'm gonna have to give him 74 more CDs to catch up!