Keith in Naples -- Wednesday, 23Dec2015

Terrific night of Christmas Cheer in Naples! When I got there, there was a little acoustic combo setting up near the spot that I always use, which was unusable anyway because of a big puddle of water from the rain the night before. So I went looking for an alternate location, and immediately came to a driveway/alley next to the brown-glass cube house. Since it's all glass I felt a bit safe that either the people weren't home, or were hiding in the back away from the tourists' eyes, and, hopefully, from being annoyed by the noise I was about to make.

It turned out to be a much better place than my usual spot because I could stand back out of the traffic flow, there was room for some kids to join me "on stage", there was a bright street light, I was facing (and playing towards) the canal and the passing tour boats, and across from the sidewalk was a wooden deck with a long bench for an audience.

And I did assemble quite a few pretty big audiences. Early on, it was families with kids who came up to shake the jingle sticks. Toward the end, I had dating couples who just needed an excuse to sit and cuddle. Either way is fine with me.

I had one older lady stop and listen for a while. She said that I sounded like Willie Nelson, and did I get that a lot? I said, no, it's usually James Taylor, but since I've been singing so much, I'd gotten a bit of a blown-out rasp that might be Willie-like. She asked if I knew that Christmas song by the Carpenters, which is one of my favorites but I seldom get to play it because it's one of "the slow schmaltzy ones". Afterwards, she admitted that she didn't have any money on her, but as a tip alternative, she wanted to "give me a cheek", and she came over so we could bump cheeks. More sanitary than a kiss, I guess.

About 10, it settled into adults, mostly college kids, just sitting and listening, so I finally got to shift from the Rudolph/Frosty/Jingle Bells cycle into the schmaltzy ones. To my surprise, nobody got bored by them and got up to leave. When I ran through all of those, I switched to some non-Christmas songs, "You've Got a Friend" and "Hallelujah", to which one girl was boldly singing along, so I recruited her to come up and sing the Girl Part for "Baby It's Cold Outside".

But as I was getting out the second mic for her, the guy in the white house came out and said, "I don't want to be a scrooge, but it's 20 till 11, and I gotta go to work in the morning". I quickly agreed to shut down after this one last song. Rachael did mostly OK, but didn't really get the inner portions of the song and kept jumping the gun on her lines. I tried to jump the guitar part to keep up with where she was, but that tended to truncate the middle of my vocal lines, causing much confusion. Really great try, though, and fun anyway.

As I was tearing down, several groups of people came by and stopped expectantly, and I had to tell them that I was done because the guy wanted to get some sleep. I had some battery life left, and clearly a lot of remaining interest, so I guess I could have moved back down by the park (the combo was surely gone by then) but my voice was pretty shot, and I had a (paying) gig the next night, so I went on home.

Gotta love Christmas time -- people are lots more friendly and less guarded, the tunes are all culturally shared, and the tips really flow. A couple of nights like that one would pay for my whole Christmas list.