When I pulled past the corner at 4:30, Chris the Catatonic Fiddle Player was there. But by the time I had parked and walked down there he was just leaving (though he reappeared about 8:00 to presumptuously demand a long string of requests. What was up with that?) I nabbed The Corner, but it meant that I started so early that the batteries died at 10. I suppose they did me a favor, cutting me off at 5 hours, but there were still people around...
Anyway, it was a pretty good night, I consistently had people around to play for but only any really big crowds a few times. (Warren had abandoned me for a band he wanted to see up at the Sawdust Festival. Me, I'm savagely boycotting the Sawdust because of my unexplained and unjustified black-balling. I'm sure they're feeling the sting.)
I did have a cute puppy, and one very successful “Let It Go” singalong. And one big teenage girl dance party and they dragged in some teenage boys from up the street a ways to dance to "Hey There, Delilah", "Don't Stop Believing" and more. That was fun.
But there was some potential new competition. A very large guy and very small lady walked by with a cart full of equipment: guitar, a full-size standup bass fiddle, amps, etc. They went down to the alley and played 60s rock 'n' roll. I heard "Magic Carpet Ride" and "Get Together". Complainin' Doug came by and he thought that they were pretty good, but I couldn't hear them from such a distance to know that for sure. I just have a bad feeling that they're yet another group angling to snag The Corner...
A lady came by and listen for a while and then came up and asked me if I play parties. I told her I did and she asked how much for how long and I told her. That seemed to meet her approval and she asked me to play at her mom's house party tomorrow evening. Unfortunately that's exactly when I already have a house party gig! I only play 10 parties a year -- how did this happen!?!
She wandered off but came back after a while and asked if I knew anybody else that could come and play. I told her, "Well, I play music, but I'm not really in any kid of "music players club..."
Later on, a guy came up and said that he had no cash, so he had liked my Facebook page instead. Cool -- that works for me.
And a funny old guy, snappily dressed in his tweed sports coat and straight from the Old Country, came right up and said, "I luff yer myuzeek! But! Do you know any... Bobe Die-len?" I do know a few, but they're really other people's versions of Dylan songs: "Mr. Tambourine Man" by The Byrds, and "Don't Think Twice" by Peter, Paul, and Mary, which is the one I did for him. Seemed to be sufficient, but I should probably try to find a song I can play more like ol' Bobe himself, just for these die hards.
I went to Minnesota for a week to visit my inexplicably-moved old music friend from high school. He managed to set us up a duo gig at the place he plays semi-regularly, whose name is variable, but usually some variant of "Captain's Lakeside Bar and Grill".
It was like nothing we have in California. Kind of a complex, with a ballroom with bar, a small restaurant, and a big patio. And a campground attached. And because it was Friday, a Meat Raffle where they raffle, like, meat. Every Friday. And people come out expressly to get in on the raffle. Of the meat.
Toto, I don't think we're in California anymore.
We played on the patio, and there were already some people there, and one nice lady who clapped loudly right from the first song, yelling "Awesome!" and such after each one. Other people came, and given a choice of sitting at tables far from us or right up close, most of them chose up close, which is flattering.
We started out in front of a little gazebo thing, but it started to rain, so we had to back up underneath it so we wouldn't kill our electronics or, you know, selves. Fortunately, the tables all had umbrellas, and this is Minnesota so nobody left because of the rain, or even seem to notice, really. What's a little rain when there's meat being raffled?
We did all songs from my book, since Bobby can follow and enhance anybody, and I'm useless. Sometimes he played bass, and sometimes the new guitar we'd bought on our road trip to his favorite gigantic guitar store over in Wisconsin. I struggled a little with the loaner not-my-guitar and its too-skinny neck, but mostly got away with it.
And people really seemed to like us, even though we weren't ('cuz I can't) doing country or bar songs. Bobby had warned me off of doing the really mellow stuff that's my forte, but as the evening progressed, it seemed that there was room for some of that, and as he began to relent on that stance, I started to cheat a bit.
Anyway, several people came up to say how good we sounded, and we got two (!) job offers, one of which Bobby signed up for on the spot, though only as a solo, obviously. Even the owner reportedly said that it was a shame that I don't live here 'cuz she'd like to have us back, and apparently she never compliments anybody.
Part way through we took a break (Bobby: Let's take a break. Me: What's a "break"?), and then Bobby decided to just let me play some more as a solo, which was fun too, mostly 'cuz I got to choose songs that he wouldn't have allowed if he was up there: "Fire and Rain", "Over the Rainbow", etc.
Anyway, it was easily the most-fun gig I've had in a long time, because of the wildly different venue, the incredible response (if smallish audience), and because it was a blast to be playing with Bobby again. And because even the Meat Raffle people liked us -- they came right up and said so.
When I got to the corner, the didgeridoo boys were there again, but this time, they were just setting up, not about to tear down. I shoulda just cut and run (to Dana Point), but Warren thought we might do OK on the no-longer-Fingerhut corner, so I set up there. He was wrong. Almost nobody stopped all night. And it put us too close to Charles, who screams into an all-treble amp along with his all-treble Telecaster, and new competition Uke Girl, who decided to set up in the alcove just up Forest. That put us at the nexus of three other bands, all no more than 50 feet away.
The only brief highlights were a lady and her boyfriend dancing away to several songs in a row, one little girl who danced in the cloud of my new bubble machine, and the arrival of the Elliot sisters (friends from high school) and their assorted husbands and brothers.
We also had an old Toshiba colleague who requested his favorite song (The Boxer) just as my microphone started acting up. We had actually accumulated a small crowd at that point (small, but the largest of the night), but after my 10 minutes of screwing around trying to figure out why it was fading in and out (a symptom I'd never seen before), they were all dispersed, except our friend. And after his song, he was gone, too, and we were left to play to only our reflections in the store window again.
The didgeridoo boys left around 10:00, and we moved over to the ice cream corner, hoping to get something going, but it was too late. We did have a *super* friendly kid who had stopped to admire the music while we were on the other side, and helped me move my stuff over -- but he left when Lena, a local bipolar lady, came by and started cussing him out for no reason at all. Indeed, her rantings got so out of hand that we just decided that enough was enough, and packed up to go home.
When I got to the corner, the didgeridoo boys were there again, but this time, they were just setting up, not about to tear down. I shoulda just cut and run (to Dana Point), but Warren thought we might do OK on the no-longer-Fingerhut corner, so I set up there. He was wrong. Almost nobody stopped all night. And it put us too close to Charles, who screams into an all-treble amp along with his all-treble Telecaster, and new competition Uke Girl, who decided to set up in the alcove just up Forest. That put us at the nexus of three other bands, all no more than 50 feet away.
The only brief highlights were a lady and her boyfriend dancing away to several songs in a row, one little girl who danced in the cloud of my new bubble machine, and the arrival of the Elliot sisters (friends from high school) and their assorted husbands and brothers.
We also had an old Toshiba colleague who requested his favorite song (The Boxer) just as my microphone started acting up. We had actually accumulated a small crowd at that point (small, but the largest of the night), but after my 10 minutes of screwing around trying to figure out why it was fading in and out (a symptom I'd never seen before), they were all dispersed, except our friend. And after his song, he was gone, too, and we were left to play to only our reflections in the store window again.
The didgeridoo boys left around 10:00, and we moved over to the ice cream corner, hoping to get something going, but it was too late. We did have a *super* friendly kid who had stopped to admire the music while we were on the other side, and helped me move my stuff over -- but he left when Lena, a local bipolar lady, came by and started cussing him out for no reason at all. Indeed, her rantings got so out of hand that we just decided that enough was enough, and packed up to go home.
