Keith & Bobby at "Captains" -- Friday, 19Aug2016

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.