Keith at "Jamboree" -- Sunday, 28Dec2014

I met these two Long Beach guys who play together, but due to disparate music styles, not at the same time. They like to set up somewhere, and take turns playing songs. They've expanded that idea to add more musicians, and they call it "Lorenzo and Jay's Jamboree". This time it was in the Cultural Alliance of Long Beach's art gallery/workshop/hangout above the "Shenanigans" bar in Shoreline Village, across the bay from the Queen Mary. I know! Could it get any more complicated?

Anyway, we started out with just the three of us, but more guys showed up later on until there were seven players. Most of the time there were fewer than seven people there listening, and most of them were really there to work on their art projects. But toward the end, more people came (I don't know why or where from), until we had about 20.

They were quite appreciative, despite the wildly disparate music. We had 12-string strummy guy (Lorenzo), Johnny Cash-style 12-bar blues (Jay), sings along with 50's classics on backup tracks guy, R&B guy, kinda-Irish with (terrific) harmonica guy, ukulele novelty-tunes guy, and me: 70's nostalgia pop.

Mostly, it was like an Open Mic night -- indeed, I had met Tracks and Ukulele guy before at the Sababa Open Mic. But since the room and stage were large enough that everyone could be set up ready to play, there was a lot less downtime between songs, and it went round-robin instead of each guy getting a 3 or 4 song set and done.

It also made it like a "battle of the bands" because, of course, each guy wanted to outdo the one before him. It's pretty great for beginners to not have the pressure of a solo gig, but to have some pressure to do their best.

I don't know if I'll do another one, 'cuz an hour drive each way to play 10 songs is pretty low ROI, but the guy who runs the place was apparently impressed and asked me to come back and do a solo set in two weeks. That'll definitely be worth the drive.