Keith at Uncorked - Friday, 15Jan2016

So the recommendation I got from the Karaoke guy at last Friday's surreal after-gig encounter turned into an actual gig at a local wine bar called "Uncorked". I guess the owner, Romy, took him at his word that I knew my stuff. Her only concern was for me not to be too loud. I told her not to worry -- I have a volume knob that goes all the way down to zero.

And of course, a genteel 30-seat wine bar is more appropriate for my mellow style than the noisy beer bar that I played at last week. The only real problem was the layout -- it's a long rectangle, divided into two squares by a short wall down the middle. The front half is the store, and the back half is the wine bar. There's no room there to set up, so I was far away from the actual people, and had a tough time getting any interaction going.

Especially since Romy spilled water on the song lists she was passing out and so failed to deliver them to half the room. The people with lists did make some requests, but since I was so far away, they had to get up and come over to me instead of just shouting them out, so that dissuades them from doing it much.

But it went quite well anyway. The people and Romy seemed very pleased, and she immediately booked me for two more gigs there -- her next two open spots, next week and the end of February.

The tricky part of these kinds of gigs is that, since people tend to stay put for most of, if not all of, the evening, I feel like I can't play any given song more than once. Fortunately, I have over 350 songs in my book -- not all of which are equally ready to play in public, but certainly enough are to cover the three hours.

The place is close enough to home that my wife invited our neighbors to come out and see me. The ladies talked most of the time, but the husband seemed to be having a really great time, requesting several Beatle songs and repeatedly coming up to put money in the jar, even though I told him he didn't have to do that.

Anyway, it was pretty fun, though it would have been more fun if I could have gotten closer to the people, which I'll try to do next time. But a great start, and it's terrific to finally have something that looks like a regular (indoors!) gig.