The Tommies are pretty much a fixture, but Warren went down early to forestall any incursion by the two little ukulele girls. That meant that we got to start at 9:00, which isn't ideal by any means, but we haven't figured out a way to do any better.
Fortunately, the weather was nice, so there were lots of people out, even after 9:00. My laryngitis was almost completely gone, and by the end of the night I was warmed up enough to do even the songs with high notes.
Before I even got a chance to play my customary "Hotel California" opening number, a lady came up and flaunted a twenty dollar bill at me if I could/would play "House at Pooh Corner", which I totally can, and did, along with "Landslide", which she and her friend danced to. She was crazy thrilled, and it made for a great start. Because of her enthusiasm and antics, we gathered a crowd right from the beginning. And kept it all night long, too.
A few songs later, my 4-year-old superfan Natalia showed up with her family. They've come by 3 or 4 times now, and clearly live nearby and come down every Saturday looking for me. She has my CD, so she knows all my kid songs. Her favorite is clearly "You'll Be In My Heart" from "Tarzan", which she and her (very pregnant) mom like to dance to. She also asked for "Do You Want To Build a Snowman" which she claimed was "for my little brother", and "Puff, the Magic Dragon" which, although most adults claim to dislike it, a lot of them sing along.
A nice couple was there for a while, with the lady singing along on every song. She asked me for a few, and, detecting an accent, I asked where they were from: Wales. And another of my CDs is on its way to Europe. After a while they got up and said that they needed to go see some more sights, but they were back surprisingly soon, and stayed a long time -- nice to think that my music outweighed the sights of Laguna Beach. While they were gone, a couple of ladies from London had stopped in for some songs, and we had a bit of "Who gets the next request" competition. Fortunately, a street fight didn't break out...
Later on, a couple of guys came by, and the one with the blonde dreads was trying to sing some harmony, but kept being confused that the part he was trying to add was already there (by the harmony box). He told us the story of how his guitar got stolen at a photoshoot, and Jackson Browne bought him a "custom Gibson" to replace it. Nice.
He asked for "Old Man" 'cuz he wanted to rap to it (???), but there was no openings in it to do so (obviously). So I fired up a few of its chords in a loop, and he started "rapping", but it wasn't the usual urban rap, it was that reggae style stream of consciousness gibberish kind. I couldn't hear or understand most of it, nor parse even less, but it was something about the Cherokee man telling the story of feeding the good wolf. So that was, let's say, unusual...
Anyway, a really great night for my first one back in a while. Lots of people, all night long -- and we played from 9:00 until the batteries gave out at 1:15am. It felt like summer again.
My laryngitis finally subsided enough to let me (try to) sing at my monthly Senior Home gig. I still wasn't convinced that I'd be able to sing well, but I'd already postponed it a week, so I went to give it a try.
And, yes, I was a bit wobbly on the high notes, especially at first, but if anyone could sympathize with wobbly high notes, it was these people. It was a bit embarrassing, but I've played there 3 or 4 times before, and they all like me. And my voice got better as it got warmed up, so by the end, I was fine. To my great relief, since I was starting to wonder if my voice was going to actually come back at all.
Anyway, it went how it usually goes -- me singing my oldest songs, up to about the early 70's, and old folks watching mostly impassively. Except the ones who sing along when they know the songs, and the ones that fall asleep.
Turns out my best sing-along song is "South of the Border" -- the old ladies really like to join in on the "Ay, yi, yi, yi" parts.
One of the ladies who works there popped in from the side door to tell me "You have a beautiful voice!". Naturally, I said, "Thank you!". A few songs later she came back in from the other side door to say the same thing again. And then when I was leaving through their office, she was there and told me a third time. This time I said, "Well, thank you, but you should hear me when I'm not sick!".
When I played at the bar/restaurant in downtown Huntington Beach, a guy came up and asked me to play "Puff" for his daughter, and later came up again to hire me to play his party. The party was to commemorate his graduating from USC dentist school, and was at his house. Turned out there's a tiny private island at the tip of Balboa Island with 8 houses on it -- his is number 6.
I played on the back patio toward the water, and had a dozen or so of his friends at a time out listening to me. Along with several boats full of curious neighbors that came by to listen in.
Problem was, I was catching a cold, and was pretty scratchy at first. But I've played sick before, and usually get away with it. But this time is was a true throat infection, not just stuffy sinuses that I can treat with medicine. I got better as I get warmed up, but then it turned around and by the end of the three hours, I was barely able to sing at all. I started doing my songs a whole step lower by leaving off the capo, but I still couldn't hit the high notes.
So, although I always play way past "quitting time", this time I had to stop, just because I was embarrassing myself. Or so I thought -- people were all, "Oh, are you quitting?!?" Considering I can barely muster enough voice to answer the question, yes, sorry, I'm quitting.
But apparently they liked me anyway. The guy's wife came up to hand me a wad of bills as my payment, and they'd overpaid me by $50 (which I *presume* was deliberate - guy lives in a $2M house). I didn't even bring my tip jar, but the guy found one and put it out for me, and I collected another $32 from the party people.
Unfortunately, on the way home, I could barely swallow, and the day after, couldn't speak at all. I have some gigs coming up in the next week -- so I hope my throat heals fast.
Anyway, it was fun, and *finally* an example of what I've been hoping would happen for the last 13 years -- somebody hears me playing at a place, and hires me to play at another place. That's how it ought to work, right?
I saw an announcement on Facebook of a guy looking for bands. I sent him a message and he was actually looking for a band to play a Mother's Day event in Huntington Beach. I told him that mothers love my stuff, so he booked me.
Turns out it was a "Mother's Day Boutique", the weekend *before* Mother's Day, and I was the opening shift from 12:30-1:30. So I ended up playing the whole time to the six or eight ladies that were there selling scarves, jewelry, and vintage clothes -- and nobody else. Epic fail. I guess I'm lucky it was only one hour...
And to make it worse, the "act" after me was the owner's teenage son, singing his Sinatra imitation to iPod backing tracks. If that's not humiliating, I don't know what is.
But when the booking guy told me that the Mother's Day Boutique gig was only an hour long, I said that I preferred to play longer if/when I drag my stuff out. So he offered to let me play at a restaurant/bar in downtown Huntington Beach called "25 Degrees" afterwards and I leapt at the chance.
It's a trendy little place with fancy burgers, fancy appetizers, and fancy drinks. I was scheduled to play their "Happy Hour", from 3 to 6. It holds about 75 people, and was only about one-quarter full when I got there, but by 4:30 or so, it was so jammed up that people were coming in the door and leaving again 'cuz there was nowhere to sit.
Because it's small and people are there to hang with their friends, it was really, really noisy. I was worried that I was just going to be treated as background music, but people started clapping -- just a few at first (which usually fizzles out), but gaining in strength after every song.
This encouraged me, so I passed out a few song lists to the people that were closest, and started taking requests. I had taken a cue from the music on the house system as I was setting up (and remembered what had probably been the problem at my Tommy Bahama's audition), so I was playing my up-tempo stuff, and a couple of people started dancing! This is pretty unusual at 3:30 in the afternoon.
It was tough, with so much noise, especially since I was playing through the house sound system, and was apparently the only one who couldn't hear it, back in my little corner. But I kept stepping out to hear what it was like for everyone else, and it was pretty reasonable. I just had to play on faith, which, after all this time, I can pretty much do.
A guy came in with his wife and little kids, and after a while he came over to request "Puff" for his daughter. A while later he came back over and asked if he could hire me to play at his party in two weeks. Absolutely!
So, despite not being able to hear myself over the din, I had a great time. And I guess when you're paying $8 for a burger and $4 for fries, you can afford to tip well, so I almost doubled what they paid me in tips.
The real problem was the parking -- the meters wanted $3 for the two hour max, so I had to keep running out and dumping more quarters in. People were having so much fun making requests that they wouldn't let me go and I ended up staying 45 minutes over -- only finally forcefully quitting to hurriedly pack my stuff up to barely get back to the meter in time.
Afterwards, I realized that this was exactly what I've been looking for -- a friendly casual place to play (indoors) where people like my stuff -- and I'd only accidentally stumbled into it. Bring on more gigs here, and more places like it!
Tom told Warren that they wouldn't be down on The Corner this time, so I was ready for an early start. But at the last minute Tom's plans changed so he would be there after all, and planned to stay until 8:30, and he thought the Ukulele Girls would be down there, too. So I figured I'd better get there at 8:00 to be Next In Line. Which worked, but mostly because the Uke Girls made the tactical error of setting up across the street so I was on the bench and closer to swoop in when the Tommies quit.
But the now five-piece Uke band was set up aimed right across at us, and especially the enthusiastic, too-loud, and rhythm-challenged new bongo player was pretty disruptive. Fortunately, they only know 4 or 5 songs, and after a few repeats of each, they got bored and went home.
This was the first outing for the new Magic Bag, since the old one got stolen last weekend. All new bag (which slowed down setup and teardown 'cuz I can't find/replace anything in the new pockets), harmony box (which also replaces the guitar interface), and wireless rigs for guitar and mic. And a new mic, of course, but it wants to hang on to only one ear, which doesn't work, and the boom is short so the mic is extra sensitive and picks up the guitar and feeds back from the monitor speaker. In other words, a disaster. Fortunately, I'd suspected it wasn't going to work and had brought along the old, old, mic, which is huge and obtrusive and squeezes my head, but works well.
But after all that, the new sound is pretty great. The new harmony box has a faster processor and new algorithms that sound noticeably (to me, anyway) better. A lot of tweaking needed still (probably too much vocal reverb on all the presets, and although the guitar sounds good (its main issue of "piezo quack" nicely dealt with), it needs a bit more bass), but it was sounding really good for a first try. And mostly better than the old rig already.
Too bad, then, that it was an inexplicably slow night for a summer Saturday. We had some small gatherings, but it was pretty slow until midnight when the Party People started to appear and we got some dancing going. We ended up playing until 1am, 'cuz that last hour was the best of the night.
