K&W in Laguna Beach -- Saturday, 30May2015

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.