K&W in Laguna Beach -- Saturday, 10May2014

Perfect weather, and we're starting to get a noticeable influx of tourists. Of the ones I asked, we had a group from New York, one from London, and three ladies from Spain. One of those came up and was all excited by the music, and when she read through my list, she was thrilled to find "Need You Now" by Lady Antebellum. I was equally surprised that a lady from Spain knew American country songs...

We had some homeless guys monopolizing the bench right at first, but they got bored after a while. But worse, "Spider" is back in town. He plays music himself, but when he comes by, he just wants to disrupt what I'm doing. He loudly requests "funny" songs, and at the end of a song, he'll either loudly proclaim "Excellent rendition, gentlemen!" as if we're auditioning for him, or he'll boo. This makes the regular people very uncomfortable...

Anyway, we had lots of families come by, and I played "Twinkle Twinkle" for the tiny ones, and, of course, "Let It Go" for the bigger ones. Only found one group that was brave enough to come up and sing along, though.

I've spent some of my newly-unemployed hours working up new songs. "Margaritaville" seems to work quite well. I played it late in the evening when nobody was around, and several people came out of nowhere to listen and smile. It's *such* a cliché, but I guess in this context, it works. "Blue Bayou" sounds good, but may be too dull. "Cowgirl in the Sand" sounds pretty good too, but is really only for use when a Neil Young fan shows up.

I'm usually a stickler for accurate (as much as possible) arrangements of songs, but I worked up a version of "Pretty Woman", transposed down to where I can sing it. The new key makes it impossible to play the signature riffs, though, so I'm just, not. I expected it to sound weird without them, but it doesn't bother me as much as I expected it to. Warren, on the other hand, seemed unconvinced that this wasn't blasphemy (and lame). I guess I'll have to try it out a few times when he's not there and see what the audience thinks.

A very nice older lady came over to tell me that she'd been listening while she was shopping at Chico's. It's a bit worrisome that I'm loud enough to be heard inside a store across the street, but it was nice of her to say so, and she was impressed enough to sit a while and listen to some more songs, and then bought a CD.

Late in the evening, a lady came by and asked me to play "Bridge Over Troubled Water", which is in my book, but not on the list, so she must have caught me playing it before sometime. I don't do it much because the high notes sound really strained unless I'm *really* warmed up, but I was, and my range has been moving upwards a bit, so I did it -- and probably the best I ever have.