K&W in Laguna Beach -- Saturday, 25June2016

Wow! That's more like it! That's the Laguna gigs we used to know and love! Lots of people out, young and old (my target demo!), generous with their time, attention, requests, and tips! We played virtually all requested songs from 7:00 until a little after midnight when the batteries gave up.

For some reason it was a big night for "Hey, Jude" and "Bridge Over Troubled Water". Had a great "Let It Go" singalong, with two little girls being watched by at least 20 cute-struck bystanders. Requests were stacking up three deep at times. One guy asked for "Suite: Judy Blue Eyes", and when its turn came around, I announced, "OK, I'm gonna play 'Suite: Judy Blue Eyes' for this guy, though I'm pretty sure he only asked for it to see if I could pull it off". He laughed hard at that, so apparently I was right. Fortunately, I pretty much can.

I was playing "Hotel California" to a pretty big crowd, and during the last verse, two VERY LOUD Harleys pulled over at the curb right behind me, completely drowning me out. I turned around and pointedly gave them several dirty looks, but kept playing, hoping they'd leave soon. But they didn't, so during the usually-fingerpicked final instrumental verse/outro, I gave up and switched to exaggeratedly slam-strumming the chords as loud as I could instead, much to the amusement of the crowd.

Warren had gone down earlier than I did, to make sure to snag The Corner, and he brought his mic and stand to do some tunes before I got there. Once I did, he went off for a snack, and a teenage girl saw the mic and came up and said, "Can I sing a duet?" I said sure, and she sang along, kinda, to "Hotel California". Fortunately, Warren had left the thing off...

But then again at midnight, a pair of drunk Woo Girls showed up and one saw the mic and wanted to sing. Since almost nobody was around that late, I let her sing along to "Landslide", one of the few Obviously Girl songs on my list (though I do it a minor third lower than the recording). She wanted to do another one, so I fired up "It's My Party". She was game enough, but, you know, drunk, and I guess the batteries decided to play critic, 'cuz just before the end of it, the amp just died.