Keith in Dana Point -- Tuesday, 27Jan2015

We went down to Dana Point Harbor on Sunday to walk the dogs, and I took the opportunity to scope it out as a place to play when the ice cream corner in Laguna is unavailable. There's a wide, presumably "public", walkway all along the harbor. At the south end, it's basically "promenade" space, with a guy playing jazz lead over backing tracks through an amplifier. He was pretty good, but his repertoire ("All of Me", "Theme from the Odd Couple", etc.) wasn't very well received. The fact that he wasn't getting chased away or hassled about his amplifier was a good sign for me.

North of that, there's a big outdoor seating area for the coffee/ice cream shop that probably holds 100 people. It was completely full on Sunday, but there were only eight people there on a Tuesday night. I went into a little shop next to the coffee shop and asked the lady if she ever saw people playing music out there, and she said that sometimes there are "kids" in the summer.

But it felt a bit presumptuous to start playing for so few people, so, just to get my feet wet and start feeling comfortable playing there, I went down to the promenade. And it's a pretty nice place to play. People jogging or walking dogs, and no car traffic noise. After it got dark, I paused between songs and could hear crickets behind me! And seals barking in the distance, out in the harbor. It actually gave me a chance to really hear my sound and tune the bass and treble controls for once.

A homeless guy came by on a skateboard, with a guitar and a single bongo drum. He stopped and started emptying his pockets onto the ground, and finally found what he said was his last quarter to put in the jar. He kept digging for another couple of songs, looking for a guitar pick. Failing that, and since I didn't have one to loan him (and probably also deciding that he couldn't really play along with the kind of stuff I do), he gave up and skated away.

I had brought out only the minimum stuff to start playing, and surprised myself that I could play for an hour from memory. I had several families come by to play kids songs for, and a lady who wanted to dedicate "Bridge Over Trouble Water" to her friends. And a guy who came up to tell me that I sounded so good, he thought it was a party up the hill at the Marriott.

Two ladies jogged by, and one stopped to call out in her Australian accent, "Is that *you* singing!?!" I stopped the song to reply, "I think so -- it sure *sounds* like me!"