Keith at CALB -- Saturday, 10Jan2015

Hi Mom. I know you're not around to read these stories about my gig adventures anymore, but you'll always be the one I'm telling them to as I write them down, and I'm pretty sure you wouldn't have wanted me to stop, so I'm just going to pick up where I left off.

At the "Jamboree" that I played two weeks ago, the manager of the "Cultural Alliance of Long Beach" gallery (Tom) came up afterward and invited me to come back and do a night solo. Sounded like a great way to get started/introduced to the Long Beach music scene, but the weather didn't cooperate. Literally nobody came out in the rain, so I played the whole time to Tom and his lieutenant, Victor.

But the sound was good and they were an appreciative audience, so it was kinda fun anyway. Tom kept going downstairs with a stack of fliers to try to drum up some audience, but there was literally no one around. Nice of him to try, though.

I had been getting emails from a lady who had apparently heard me somewhere and wanted to come see me again for her husband's birthday. But the rain scared them off, too. Oh well.

Afterwards, the guys advised me to try the places in Bixby Knowles, the affluent area of Long Beach. Nice idea, but I don't really know how to do that. They also apparently felt bad about my spending the whole night playing only for them, so they bought CDs and outrageously overstuffed my tip jar. And of course Tom promised to reschedule me for another try, hopefully on a nicer night.

They didn't really need to feel so bad -- it's not like I could have been playing out on the street corner in Laguna in the rain anyway...