K&W in Laguna Beach -- Saturday, 12Apr2014

Tonight was as much great as last night was terrible. And a good thing, too -- restored my faith in wanting to come down at all. And the cops drove by 5 or 6 times, but apparently it was just to keep my adrenaline level up, 'cuz they never stopped.

The weather started nice and then turned cold, but we still had a full bench almost the whole time. And in the few gaps I had a chance to play some songs I've been working or reworking up: "Southern Cross", "Billie Jean", "My Girl", and "Handyman".

But the big crowd-gathering song these days is "Mrs. Robinson". It sounds really great with the harmony box filling in for Garfunkel, and of course everybody knows it and sings along on the chorus. I just wish I could pull off that intro riff, but it's for people who know how to flatpick, not me. People don't seem to notice my poor imitation of it, though...

Had a few families come by and got a nice "Let It Go" sing-along started. And some middle-aged ladies with their long-time Laguna resident mother came by. She told us that we were the best sidewalk band she'd ever heard.

We had enough people come by to keep playing until 10:30. Toward the end, when nobody was around, I thought I'd run through my weird acoustic version of "Billie Jean" again, and suddenly three college kids showed up and were loving it. When it was done, one of the guys told me that he "felt like that was the way that song *should* have been done".