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.