K&W in Laguna Beach -- Saturday, 25Feb2017

We had a real cold snap so it was low-50s all night, which caused low traffic and an even lower stop-to-listen ratio. Oddly, after no bums at all for the last few months, there were several this time, but they were just in the way, not terribly obnoxious. As a concession to the heart repair procedure I'd had the Monday before, I brought my stool, which has the added benefit of allowing me to use my foot tambourine, though I seldom remembered it was there...

Three little girls and their dads came by for ice cream and a few songs. The girls all had wrist-bouquets, so I asked what the deal was -- they were on the way to the Father-Daughter dance at the school. Cute.

We did have some nice people at times. A couple of young ladies came by and wanted to take pictures of Warren. After a while they were picking songs, but apologized for not having any cash, to which I said my usual, "Don't worry about it -- if we were out here for the money, we wouldn't be out here."

But I guess they dug through their purses and found some emergency gas money or something because they both ended up producing five-dollar bills to buy CDs with.

At the end, a crazy-looking guy came by and was standing way too close and intensely staring at our hands and guitars, and asking questions about the equipment and chords and stuff. Warren has run into him before and he apparently plays hard rock down there occasionally, so I guess it was "professional curiosity", but it was just a bit too intense...

K&W in Laguna Beach -- Saturday, 11Feb2017

It never actually rained, but it was threatening to all day, and it was cold again, so the crowds were pretty thin. Our new friends Tim and Anna had promised to hold The Corner for us against any other challengers until we got there. It was nice to not have to worry (much) about whether or not we'd actually get to play...

With the thin crowds, it was a pretty uneventful night until right towards the end when two nice ladies and their friend showed up. He was pretty drunk (and loud) from the whiskey in his hip flask, but the ladies were nice and loved the music, and kept us playing requests until we ran up against the new 9:00 deadline. Warren thought we could probably fudge a bit over the line, so we did, but I decided that it wasn't worth the citation, and besides, "leave 'em wanting more".

While we were packing up, the ladies kept telling me that I ought to be playing at "the hotel", meaning the Hotel Laguna where they were staying, across the street. I didn't know they had a bar/lounge in there, with live music, but the ladies insisted that I was better than the band they'd seen in there earlier, and they wanted me to go over there with them and see about getting a gig there.

That didn't seem likely, but after I'd taken my stuff back to the car, I thought, what the heck, and walked back to the hotel and found them in the bar. Two guys were playing some rowdy blues-rock, exactly as I had told them was what Management in these places want, as it supposedly sells more drinks, and I can't/won't provide, so I never get hired.

But the ladies insisted that they knew some other woman who sings there, and they'd talk to her and get me an audition. They also said that they'd come see me in the morning in Dana Point. Spoiler Alert: Neither of those things happened.