K&W in Laguna Beach -- Saturday, 25Mar2017

Pretty good night. Lots of kids out at first, including a pack of girls who'd just come from the beach (with some parents). They were on their way past when the crosswalk signal stopped them and I hijacked them by handing out the song lists. And since they'd all seen the new "Beauty and the Beast" movie the day before, you can guess what song they wanted.

Now that my Vietnamese super fans know how to find me, they came by again. Phuong has to be the sweetest lady I've ever met -- there are probably a few adult women who will admit that "Puff, the Magic Dragon" is their favorite song, but how many also cry at the story of "The Boxer"?

But they didn't get there until about 8:30, and we're supposed to quit at 9. Warren says that he and Jim have been exceeding that deadline lately and getting away with it, and theorizes that, since Sanchez has apparently disappeared for good, and was presumably the cause of the curfew, the cops have relaxed their enforcement again.

That sounded OK to me, except that, right at 9:00, the cops' little golf cart was parked right across the street from us, while they were inside the gallery over there for some reason. It seemed a bit inexpedient for us to be observably playing through amplifiers when they came out, so I shut it down and just chatted with Phuong and Chris until the cops left. Then we went ahead and played until 10:20, with no further police appearances.

Still too many bums, and especially obnoxious drunken ones, for my tastes, but Warren tried to keep a lid on that, as best he could. It's a shame that we live in fear of the cops shutting us down, but (almost) never benefit from them helping keep the drunks out of our hair. This time though, for the first time, they came by and just hung around the worst drunk until he decided to go someplace less intimidating. More of that, please.

[My Stories] For Want of a Capo

Before my senior year of high school, I discovered that I'd already taken almost all of the "college prep" classes the school had to offer, so I had to fill the space with three electives. For the first two, I signed up for Electronics and "I R & D", which was the most advanced "shop" class. I was invited to take it by my Drafting teacher from the previous year, who taught both. (Drawings of machine parts! In pencil! On paper! *There's* a future-proof career path!)

Each kid in I R & D got to do a Project, but since all the other kids had come up the official way through the actual Shop classes, they were classic "shop kids" -- they could weld and saw, but they couldn't actually think so good. I ended up doing the design and plans for everybody else's projects -- which I suspect was the teacher's plan all along -- and never getting to one of my own.

Anyway, for my third elective, my girlfriend talked me into taking Choir, and my "next year" schedule was all settled at the beginning of summer. By the end of summer, she wasn't my girlfriend anymore, but a bunch of other girls in Choir wanted me to try out for "Mariners", the school's 12-kid pop group. What they call nowadays a "show choir" -- smiley happy kids singing pop tunes while doing choreography. Like "Up With People" or Disney's "Kids of the Kingdom".

My brother had been a Mariner two years before, but I hadn't paid much attention -- not my kind of thing. Still, the pressure of all these girls wanting me to join up worked, so I tried out, and got in (not actually too impressive a feat, since they need six guys and only about eight tried out).

I had to drop Electronics to fit the Mariner class in, which in retrospect, considering my eventual adult career, seems like a mistake, but I had the time of my life and don't regret it at all. It taught me a lot about really singing and performing, and incidentally got me started me playing guitar. Changed my life.

A couple of years after I graduated, the director/teacher of the Mariners decided to make a go of constructing a "professional" group. He recruited all the best of the previous few years' worth of kids, and I auditioned, but didn't make the cut as a singer/dancer. But by that time I was a (barely serviceable) bass player, and this group was to have an actual backing band, not just a piano player, so I got in that way.

They found a drummer and my best friend Bob was brought in to play guitar, and we were up and running. We learned a bunch of songs, and might have even played a few gigs, though I don't remember any. Nor getting paid, ever...

The director decided to do an actual Concert, and rented the Long Beach Elks dome. We sold tickets to our friends and relatives, and almost nobody else. But it was exciting nonetheless.

It was decided that "the band" would get to do a song -- probably just to fill some time. Bobby and I chose James Taylor's "Hey Mister, That's Me Up On the Jukebox", with me singing. To put the song in the proper key to make it singable, Bobby would use a capo -- the clamp that makes the guitar neck effectively shorter, and therefore pitched higher -- the same as how James plays it. But bass players don't use capos, they just learn the song in the key that the capoed guitar now sounds like.

We practiced the song until I was presumably ready to do it in public for the concert. We got to the Elks Dome and set up on the huge stage under the spotlights. Our amplifiers were at the back of the stage and Bobby and I stood by them while the 12 main performers sang and danced out front.

When it came time for our song, the kids cleared out, and Bobby and I walked out to the front of the stage and up to the microphone standing there, dragging long cables behind us. I was nervous, obviously. I looked over at Bobby to see if he was ready, and he said those four fateful words, "I forgot my capo."

Time stopped. The implication was clear -- without his capo, we'd be playing in two different keys. I had two choices: sing it with only guitar, or only bass. Only bass would be in the right key, but sound lame -- obviously, singing with only guitar is more "complete". So, that choice made, I further decided it would look dumb for me to stand there holding my bass but not playing it, so I walked the half-mile back to the amplifiers, put the bass on its stand, and walked the now three miles back to the mic at the front of the stage.

Bobby started the song, and I sang it -- a little low sans-capo, but not out of range. One best-kept secret about playing guitar (or bass) is that, secondarily only to its use as a musical accompaniment, it also serves as Something To Do With Your Hands, and just as importantly, as a psychological shield between you and the audience. Without my bass I was naked -- nothing to do with my hands, and nothing between Me and Them. Multiply the stage anxiety by ten.

But I got through it. People say I did good, but how much can you believe your relatives in this regard? I wouldn't know -- I was in shock.

But the kicker was, when we finished the song and walked back to our places by the amplifiers, there was Bobby's capo, sitting on his amplifier. Sitting. On. His. Amplifier. By "forgot", he meant, "left it back there on the amp". Within arm's reach of, say, my bass stand. Instead of me walking back and forth to put down the bass and being left to sing the song without it, he could have walked back there and gotten the capo. And yet, somehow, he remains unmurdered.

If I recall correctly (though I'm pretty sure I don't), that was the last gasp of the professional song-and-dance group, though probably *not* really due to our little capo fiasco that I'm sure the audience barely noticed. But it did prove to be a somewhat inauspicious start to my solo singing career -- though that would be on hold for 25 years to let me get good enough on guitar to not be reliant on someone else's capo...

Keith at Festival of Whales -- Sat/Sun, 11-12Mar2017

The lady in charge of the Festival of Whales told me that she had gotten so many good comments about me that she was going to find me a better place to play (and double my pay!). So on Saturday, she put me in the "Dana Wharf Plaza", near some restaurants and the dock where the Whale Watching boats are.

The big plaza certainly looked like a better place to play, but it was actually a little *too* big, which made it too impersonal. Lots of people came by to listen, but they were so far away that there was no actual interaction. Only the brave ones came all the way over to look through the list and request songs.

But I was able to pry several sets of kids away from their lunch at the fish & chips place to dance out front for a while. And enough people came over to sit at the side benches nearby to make it fun enough that I stayed for four and a half hours.

On Sunday, she tried to get me into my usual non-Festival place in front of the coffee shop, but they already had someone else booked there, so I was back where I was the previous Sunday -- along the walkway around the harbor. This time the classic cars they'd scheduled actually showed up, so there was a perfectly restored 1973 Jaguar XKE right next to me. It was a little awkward -- my music made it hard for them to talk to people about the car, and their talking kind of interfered with my music, but we got along OK.

What was much worse was the "Whale of a Concert on the Water" at Baby Beach, which, despite being 400 yards away, was *really* loud. First there was a cover band, then a girl-singer cover band, then a U2 tribute band, all on a floating stage in front of the beach. Cool, but, wow, really loud. Several people coming from that direction told me that they preferred my music to "those guys", but I'm sure that anyone with the opposite opinion just kept it to themselves.

My strategy of putting the colorful Kids' Song lists on the ground right at the edge of the sidewalk worked well again. Lots of kids got sucked in, which made their parents stop to let the kids request a song or three. And sometimes it was the parents that noticed the lists...

At one point a guy came up with a fiver in his hand and said he wanted to buy a CD. I said, sure, just take one, and he said that there was none left! I had set six of each ("Favorites" and "Kids' Favorites") out there, but sure enough, they were all gone, so I dug some more out to give him one. I'm pretty sure that's the most CDs I've ever sold at a single gig.

K&W in Laguna Beach -- Saturday, 11Mar2017

Despite playing long hours at the Dana Point Whale Festival on both Saturday and Sunday, it was "our turn" on The Corner in Laguna, and I can't pass that up. So I quit Dana Point at 4:00, drove through some fast food and up the coast to play some more.

Traffic was terrible getting there, but I got lucky with parking and The Corner was empty when I rolled up. I set up and tried to play, but my amp was all but dead -- and I knew exactly what was wrong. Earlier in the week, I had opened it up to replace the dead battery inside, and, by the symptom, I'd clearly knocked one of the wires to the speaker loose while I was in there. Fortunately, the guy in the ice cream store had a screwdriver I could borrow, so a field-strip right there on The Corner later, I was up and running again by 6:00.

It was strangely foggy down there, and still not a lot of foot traffic (but why were there so many cars?!?). Unfortunately, the bums were out in force. I don't know where they spend the winter, but they're apparently back. When I started playing, I could have thrown eight rocks and hit eight bums. Including good ol' Josh, who sits at the side bench mumble-chanting "Aloha, aloha!" and holding up his Legalize Marijuana signs. Somebody should really tell him that he's won that one and can go on home...

Warren had a guest visiting from Back East, so I was solo for the first two hours until he showed up with the wife and guest in tow. I tried to play songs that would let him show off a bit for his friend, balanced against the not-so-showy tunes requested by other people and his wife.

And my Vietnamese superfans, Christopher and Phuong, showed up again after an almost two-year absence. They had apparently come by last week looking for me, and Tom told them to try next week. So they did -- such dedication! I tried to play new songs that they hadn't heard before, but Phuong kept requesting classics from the CDs. They're such fans that they always ask if I have any new CDs, which is fair, since I recorded the "Favorites" one six years ago...

Keith at "Festival of Whales" -- Sat/Sun 04-05Mar2017

A couple of weeks ago, the lady who runs the Festival of Whales (Andrea) happened to see me playing in front of the coffee shop, and essentially asked me, "Do you play for the Festival? Would you like to?" Of course I said "No, and yes!", so even though they were already booked up, she's finding me places to play anyway.

She must really like my stuff, 'cuz even though I volunteered to play for free (since I do every weekend anyway, and I really just wanted to not be shut out for two weekends), she got me some money -- and after the rave reviews she got after my first day, has up and doubled that. And more importantly, she's intently trying to find me even better spots to play in for next weekend.

On Saturday, she put me down at "Baby Beach", where they were having the sandcastle building contest. It was a bit weird, since there's no real traffic, and the people were kind of far away, but I had a lot of people come up and thank me for making the day special, and I sold several CDs.

Then on Sunday, she moved me down along the "Harbor Walkway", where the classic Woodies were supposed to be, but they got scared off by the predicted rain and didn't show. I played for a while over by the Harbor office building (ironically literally right outside the window of the lady who gave me so much trouble getting the Permit to play down there), but it was a little too far away from the people going by. Seeing this, Andrea suggested that I move down the way a bit and closer to the walkway, which worked much better but had no shade, so she called someone and had them bring me an Easy-Up.

But like 15 minutes after they came and set it up, the weather made an abrupt change and instead of keeping me from getting sunburned, it was keeping me from getting rained on. I was OK with waiting it out for a while, but since it had sent any potential audience running, there wasn't much point. Andrea (and her mom!) helped me toss the stuff into the back of my car, and I went home, having only gotten to play for two hours.

Next week: better weather, and an even better spot!