Keith at Hospitality Night -- Friday, 02Dec2016

Laguna Beach has its "Hospitality Night" on the first Friday of December, when they close off their main street for a big "block party", and Santa comes by to light up the historic pepper tree in front of city hall. My friend in the Laguna Beach Historic Society has me come play from the front porch of their downtown historic bungalow headquarters, hoping to entice some passers-by to come in and look at their historic artifacts and photos.

And it certainly worked. Despite the cold Santa Ana winds, lots of people were out, and most of them stopped for a while to listen (sometimes pointedly crossing the street to do so). Fortunately, the wind graciously mostly died down while I was playing, coming back with a vengeance just as I was leaving and driving home.

I had someone to play for almost the whole time, and three or four times I had the entire sidewalk jammed with listeners. And I must have had a dozen groups stop to listen for a while, and then someone says, "You know, I've never been in here", and someone else, "Let's go in, then!", so it worked beautifully as a promo for the Historic Society.

Several times I had people come up onto the porch and sing along, softly. One lady seemed reasonably bold, so I asked her to sing the Girl Part to "Baby, It's Cold Outside", and she made a swing at it, but turned out to not actually know the tune outside of the first few lines. Oh well, fun for both of us anyway.

Anyway, it was fun -- and great to have a gig where I get to play the schmaltzy Christmas songs and people actually listen and appreciate it. I can't really do those at my nine Santa Claus gigs.