K&W in Laguna Beach -- Saturday, 19Apr2104

Great day/evening! Nice weather, lots of nice people on the bench the whole time -- which was almost six hours. But I didn't even notice -- time was flying; I must have been having fun.

I usually don't sell any CDs, so it didn't bother me that I only had three with me to put out. But someone bought one, and some other people saw that and decided that that looked like a good idea, and then someone else, and I was sold out in 2 minutes. I'll have to start packing more inventory, I guess.

Finally had some families come by so I was able to give out some bubbles (when it's daytime) and finger lights (after dark). It's not really meant to be a scam; I just like making the kids happy. But the dads inevitably put more, or bigger, money in the jar -- or send the kids up with some.

The Request List isn't meant to be a money-maker either -- I'd just rather play the songs that whoever's there wants to hear. So I pass out the lists (and the more I do, the more connected to the audience, and the more fun), and people choose songs from them, and also tend to add money to the jar. Which I don't mind, of course, but I hope they don't think that I'm handing them a list just to scam money out of them.

Two new songs this week. People keep asking, "Do you know any Neil Young?" Most other artists, they ask for specific songs, but for some reason, they ask for Neil Young by name. I always play "Old Man", which is certainly a top 3 answer to that question, but I felt like I should have more options, so I worked up "Cowgirl in the Sand". I lowered it, but it's still Pretty Darn High to sing, but it sounds good, and it's fun to pretend that I know how to flatpick...

The other song was "Blue Bayou", which in either Roy Orbison's or Linda Ronstadt's case has a really low verse, and a really high chorus. I'm still working out where to put the capo to center it on my range to try to hit both extremes. Fun to sing, though.

Around 10:30 some teenage boys came by who were clearly musically knowledgeable. One of them was clearly a drummer; playing "air drums" along with my songs, so I gave him some of my tambourine sticks (which some moms misinterpret as "rattles" for their babies, as seen above), and he improvised a drum out of an empty paper ice cream cup, and played along on a few songs. That was pretty cool.