K&W in Laguna Beach -- Monday, 26Jun2017

Started off as a nice bright sunny summer day, and became a lovely night. Lots of nice people, and appreciative too, according to the tip jar.

But the highlight was a pair of young girls, one of which was just incredibly full of life. She truly "danced like no one's watching", and I couldn't do her justice without resorting to this faux-multiple exposure picture I 'shopped up. If you've seen the Netflix show "Anne with an 'E'" (and if you've had daughters, you definitely should), she reminded me so much of Anne. Made my night. Heck, made my week!

K&W at a Private Party -- Thursday, 08Jun2017

So last Sunday, a guy walked up and asked us what we were doing Thursday night, and ended up hiring us, sorta, to play what we understood to be a gallery opening party -- with a hundy in cash as a deposit. With his accent, we didn't catch his name, nor the name of the gallery, nor even the location that he only mentioned had something to do with "the pool store" and "that famous florist".

We waited for an email to explain some or all of that, but it never came, but with some clever Google Mapping, we had a best guess candidate location. I sat in my car outside the (probable) pool store, and finally got a phone call, wondering where we were. Turns out his "gallery" was more of an apartment, which he's styling as a "studio", and it's just above the pool store. And his name turned out to be Claudiu (he's Romanian).

So it was "the opening" of what will be, stay with me here, a free "art lessons" studio for kids, that's really a daycare in disguise, since he can't "do commerce" up there. So he'll give free art lessons, and take donations from grateful parents. But it was also his birthday, so he hired a band -- us.

We thought it was an actual event, of course, so we showed up plenty early to set up and be ready to play for the party, so we were by far the first to arrive, and by the end of it, practically the *only* to arrive. A nice lady, Christie, from up the street showed up, and eventually brought her nine-year-old son down, and one other guy came by, but that was it, all night. If you don't count the Dominos guy...

But he paid us the balance of the $300 I asked for right at the beginning, so we hung around, played when Christie would come out to the balcony, and played some new stuff I've been working on, just to pass the time.

Around 8:30 Claudiu ordered six pizzas, but before it arrived, the cops had come by reporting a complaint by some neighbor, and shut us down. Warren went ahead home after that, but I stayed for some pizza and to make poor Claudiu's birthday a little less sad. Six pizzas for four people was a little much, but Claudiu still held out a conviction that his "mates" (he grew up in Australia) would be there any time. I hope so, but I gave up just before 10:00.

I'm pretty sure he hadn't hired us to play for his birthday just to have someone actually at his party, but if you don't count the child, there were as many band members as guests. Fortunately, Claudiu is a big happy, friendly guy and it didn't seem to bother him much. He was mostly unhappy that his new neighbors would ruin his birthday by calling the cops on his band.

So overall, a really weird night. The venue was crazy, the host was crazy (spent the evening telling us all his big business ideas), and even the pizza was crazy (who orders Dominos "Thin Crust"?!?). And getting shut down by the cops for volume was a new one on us. But we got paid, and made a new friend, so, success?

K&W in Laguna Beach -- Sunday, 04June2017

We did OK on Memorial Day Sunday, so we thought we'd give a "regular" Sunday a try, to see if enough people were out of school to get us some traffic. Not so much, but not too bad, either.

It was kind of gloomy, also, so that limited the number of beach-goers and ice-cream-eaters we could rope in for a few songs, but it was fun, if uneventful.

Shouldn't be too long now before it'll be full-blown summer, lots of people out on any night, and too hot to stand there in the sun. I can't wait.

K&W in Laguna Beach -- Saturday, 03Jun2017

It was the third of June, but not sleepy nor dusty, since we're not in the Delta. A bit overcast down by the beach, actually, but that just made it less scorching. Lots of friendly people came by. We had a cute little girl with her family, and when I asked the mom if her daughter might know any of my Kids' songs, she replied in a strong accent. I asked where they were from and she said "Russia". I don't know -- with all the election interference stuff going down, is that awkward these days?

Hard to tell, but they were nice and the little girl was having fun, and so was I. Anyway, it's apparently summer enough that we're starting to get foreign visitors, because later on, a trio of nice young ladies came by from Japan. A couple of years ago, I (tried to) learn "Sukiyaki", the most famous (to Americans) Japanese song, just so I could do it if any Japanese tourists came by. It hasn't happened until now, so I knew I had to do it or I'd be mad at myself later on. So I did, and instead, I got to be mad at myself for totally butchering it. I don't know any Japanese, despite my years at Toshiba and many weeks spent in Japan, so I have it written out phonetically, but it's still pretty hard to read and sing it at speed. Oh well -- they were really sweet about it, saying my Japanese was really good, a blindingly white lie if I ever heard one.

We also had a visit from my little superfan from Spain, "Gabby", who first saw me playing four years ago at Spectrum. After that first time, her family brought her by just about every time I played there, and she even once showed up with a (completely unplayable) pink toy guitar which her parents bought her because she wanted to be like me. It was a lucky coincidence that they came by this time in Laguna, since her mom told me that they were due to move back to Barcelona next Tuesday. And just in time for them to pick up the updated Kids' Favorites CD, since I added a bunch of Disney songs to it.

A pretty great night, all around.