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?