K&W in Laguna Beach -- Tuesday, 18Aug2015

What a great night! I went down early to beat the Tommies to The Corner, but they never showed at all. Whatever -- I had the place to myself all night, and it was *way* more fun than getting stuck on the Other Corner on Saturdays has been lately. Not Saturday-sized crowds, but a nice steady stream of listeners all night. I never had any big parties, but I did have 6-10 people around the whole time.

Indeed, our old Laguna friend Silly Patty showed up, and since it was a weeknight, I was expecting a Nobody Listening Lull at any time so I could go out and talk to her, but it never came. She stayed a long time though, and asked for her favorite songs, "Five O'Clock World", "Fields of Gold" and "Bus Stop".

At 6:30 it's still light out, and there are already lots of people around, eating ice cream and hanging out, so I had a built-in audience right away. One guy with a glaring Aussie accent stayed to listen for a long time and told me where he was from when I asked -- Las Vegas. And later on, a little old lady who we often see walking through with her Cavalier King Charles stopped this time, and asked if I know "You Are My Sunshine" and would I play it for the dog. I do, and did.

I passed out the Song Lists, and they basically never came back. People would make their requests, and pass the lists off to any newcomers. That was cool -- it kept the interest and requests coming, and also saved me the trouble of handing them out over and over.

Of course it was a work night, so Warren showed up at 8:30 or 9. That gave me a chance to twiddle with the knobs to try to get my new guitar sounding right without having his guitar in the mix. I got closer, but it's still not working as well as the old one. I'll get there.

It is feeling pretty close to Right, though, playability-wise, now that I adjusted the action. I'm not having any trouble with the neck shrinkage (from 2" to 1-7/8"), but I do still need to rebuild the nut anyway to shift the strings over. I'm very pleased with the "strumming end" difference, though. Strumming is working much better with this guitar, and I can tell the difference even in just the Final Chord endings. And it's a lot easier on my fingers since I took off the fatter-gauge top three strings and replaced them with the gauge I'm used to.

Anyway, it was a really nice evening. The lower foot and auto traffic made it quieter and nicer to play, and it was great to have a constant moderate-sized audience to play for. A far more pleasant evening than standing on the Fingerhut side feeling frustrated...