Keith at Taco Surf -- Friday, 14Jul2017

A couple of weeks ago, some ladies came up to me while I was playing at Dana Point harbor, and asked if I ever played at "Taco Surf". I said no, 'cuz I've never even heard of it. They said that they love that place and I'd be perfect there, etc.

So I looked it up, and it looked like a fun place to be and/or play, so I gathered up my nerve and walked in and asked about playing there. They referred me to the owner, and he took one look at my list of songs and asked if I could play Fridays. I told him I could play any night, and he went in the back to consult his calendar. While I was still wondering what the audition process was going to be, he came back with a list confirming me as playing the next five Fridays!

He hadn't even heard me! But I've subsequently gathered that his wife, who runs the joint on Fridays, has been nagging at him that they should have music on Fridays, so he just jumped on a chance to fill them all, sight unseen (well, sound unheard). So here I was expecting to (a) audition in some fashion, and (b) maybe play one night as a trial, possibly even without pay, but instead I had to frantically check my calendar to see if my next five Fridays were free!

So it's a kind of "Mexican Cantina", with the walls covered with surf and beer posters, fake thatching here and there, and crazy rustic architecture. There's a long skinny room as you enter, with the two-sided bar on the left that also serves the outside patio. In between is the main dining room, with eight tables, and a little stage at one end.

I set up and started playing, but maybe because the room is so small, I was having terrible feedback problems with my guitar. It was a struggle to be loud enough to fill the room (and the patio outside) over the load ambient noise of the restaurant without causing feedback.

But, even though I thought it was sounding terrible ('cuz I had to turn the bass on the guitar down to zero) and that nobody could hear me ('cuz I couldn't), the waitresses, bartender, and owner's wife kept telling me that it sounded great, perfect volume, and great music. OK, I guess I'll just have to take that on faith.

Of course, at a restaurant, people are there to have fun with their friends, not listen to a "concert", so it was noisy in there, and people generally had other things on their agenda than paying attention to me. I passed out my songlists to every table, and that kept them a little more involved, but the cleanup lady kept taking them and stacking them on the bar (after the first one she didn't recognize as Important and threw away), and I kept having to go out and fetch them and put them back on the tables. Maybe we can come to an agreement on those, next time...

One guy from out on the patio must have really liked my stuff, 'cuz he kept coming in and asking for a song, listening from outside, then coming back in to clap and ask for another one, and for me to turn it up (which I couldn't do).

Later on, some old ladies came in, and when I walked over to ask if they had any requests from the list, one lady said that she was just still deciding which one she wanted to sing with me. *With* me? I told her that I only had one mic, and she said that was OK, and just stood up there next to me and we sang "Fire and Rain" together. She said that she was sure that the other ladies in the "Ukulele Club" would get a kick out of it, as her friend took pictures (and video?).

Anyway, it was generally fun, if sound/musically disastrous. I guess I'll go back, at least one more time. Hopefully I'll figure something out to fix that feedback problem.