K&W in Laguna Beach -- Saturday, 10Oct2015

Great night! Despite being October, the temps were in the 90's, so there were lots of people out. I got down there at 6:00 to make sure that our deal with Tom that made it Our Turn didn't get snarfed by somebody else.

There were three ladies on the bench as I got set up, so I gave them songlists to go over. Once I was ready, I started playing "Hotel California" as I always do as my "warm up song", and they gasped in amazement that I had read their minds as to what song they wanted.

But halfway through it, the guitar cut out, as it had been doing two weeks ago at the very end. I attempted to fix it at home, but it worked fine there, so nothing to fix. But since it was presumably the wireless rig that was failing, I brought a cable this time as a backup. So when it died again, I swapped in the cable, and it worked -- for another 30 seconds.

As a test, I hooked up the ukulele and it worked fine, proving that it was the 9-volt battery that powers the pre-amp in the guitar -- which I had no spares for. (But, wow, *so* much better than trying to get the wireless rig repaired!) Fortunately, these days I have a "backup" for the whole guitar, so I played ukulele songs until Warren arrived to loan me a new guitar battery.

I started, of course, with "Over the Rainbow", and then "I'm Yours" and "Hey, Soul Sister". After that, all I have is kids' songs and Hawaiian Novelty Tunes, which I didn't think would work, but quite a lot of people had stopped by then to listen, including a family with a little girl, so I launched "Someone to Lava" from the short before the new Pixar movie. And it worked -- the little girl gave a start of recognition, and excitedly nudged her mom who also "got it". Yay!

We had a pretty good audience all night. It actually seems like "moderate" traffic works better than "heavy" 'cuz people don't feel so "swept along" and can slow down or stop to listen. I basically had requests going all night long -- indeed I was starting to feel like I hadn't had a chance to play some of my best songs only because they hadn't been requested and I couldn't get a song of my own choosing in. Nice problem to have!

Three ladies came by and requested "Kiss the Girl" from "The Little Mermaid" from the kids' list. OK with me -- that song goes over well with all ages. A local guy who I've seen before was there and said, "Hey, I was an animator on that movie!" He asked if I knew "Whole New World" from "Aladdin" (which I do) 'cuz he worked on that one, too. I pointed out that I know lots of Disney songs, indeed, I'd love to play at Downtown Disney 'cuz I'd do great there. He said, "Oh, I can get you in at Downtown Disney". Apparently he still works there, and his dad is "an executive" there.

I gave him a card, a Kids' CD (which has most of my Disney songs on it), and made him take one of my Kids' Song Lists. He seemed sure that he could talk to his boss and get us in. I'm trying not to get my hopes up too high since these things seldom pan out, but that would totally be my Dream Job!