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!