I haven't written a "gig review" in a long time, but this season in Dana Point seems to warrant one. I actually played 25 nights (over 40 days), only breaking for rain, the Mission Viejo Santa's Workshop, a couple of private parties, the Boat Parade where I'm blocked out, and of course, Thanksgiving and Christmas.
The city (or somebody?) puts up a *big* holiday spectacle -- lights on every tree and bush, two "walk-in" lightup whales, a giant "surfing Santa" bobblehead, and the main attraction: a "movie marquee" style sign that says "Merry Kiss Me" down in the promenade by the water.
It's also 50 feet from where I play on weekends at the bagel/coffee/ice cream shops; all owned by one guy, who likes me. The sign is a huge draw -- it seems like everybody in the county has to come down and get a photo under it -- so I set up to play for the people waiting their turn. Lots of couples young and old, foreign tourists, and families come down to see the lights, and they all seem pleased to find a guy in a big hat there playing holiday music.
I bring out a box of "jingle sticks", and the little ones love to shake them, rhythmically or randomly, while I play "Jingle Bells", "Frosty", "Rudolph" and the rest. If you want to see what pure joy look like, give a child a jingle toy and start playing "Jingle Bells".
With some kids I'd say, "Hey, if you want to play along, there are some jingle bells in the box here" and they'd look at me blankly. Until their mom would translate into whatever their native language was. Then they'd grab a stick and light up like 100-watt bulbs when the music started. Is "Jingle Bells" well-known in Poland? China? Iceland???
But the cutest thing all month was a 2-year-old girl who somehow knew that the best way to say "Thank you" is a high-five. After every song, she dutifully marched up to me to gently slap her tiny hand on mine, only to immediately about-face and go back to her position, ready for the next song. And she got her parents to bring her back to give me a cuteness overdose a second night.
As it turns out, though, there aren't really very many kids' songs for Christmas. You'd think there are, but it's really about seven. And most of them are pretty short. Most families stick around for about one loop through them, so it works out, but sometimes the kids will insist on staying longer. So I have to drag out the more obscure stuff like "Mele Kalikimaka", which seemed pretty famous in my time, but not a lot of kids know it anymore.
One night after the kids were all gone, I was playing it just for the variety, and a lady started doing the hula. *Real* hula, too. Her three friends got all excited and started to video her, and when the song was over (it's *really* short), I happily played it again. That was fun.
It's not all roses, of course. For one thing, it's cold. Hard to stand there, harder still to play guitar with frozen fingers. And this year, I got some "competition". Two teenage girls set up down the way with a big loud sound system, and a few nights later, a full-on rock band started up, prompting a visit from Security that shut them, and the girls, down. Fortunately, my "blessing" from the ice cream shop owner proved to be my Get Out Of Jail Free card, so I got to play the rest of the season solo.
Except the night that a guy showed up with a guitar strapped to his back, and some bystander thought I should let him join in, so I did. He was reasonably competent, somewhat messily keeping up with the songs I was doing -- faking the chords and playing lead whenever I could figure out how to inset an instrumental verse. He eventually dragged out a cable and I let him plug into my amp -- and he got immediately busted by the Security Guy for not having a permit. Which, actually, thanks -- it was kinda fun, but was mostly messing me up...
Anyway, I stood there night after night watching people take pictures with the "Merry Kiss Me" sign. Unfortunately, the inclination was to have the kissing couple stand directly under the sign, with the cameraman standing back far enough to get the whole sign in. This had the effect of making the people *very* small in the picture.
So I tried to help by putting markers on the sidewalk to get the kissers to stand well forward of the sign. People only "got it" about half the time, though, so I spent a lot of time walking out between songs to point out the suggestion. Most people were initially confused as to why I was interfering, but ended up grateful once they realized that it really was a better shot.
Overall, for me, it really *is* "the most wonderful time of the year". Lots of happy families, excited kids, generous dads. I was literally there every single night I could be. And I'll be back next year, for sure.
After three years of being left out, I finally got back into the Sawdust Festival this year for two gigs, the second of which was on the annual "Beatles Day". For the occasion, I built a special Request List with 26 Beatles songs front and center. It turned out that people were mostly more intrigued by my non-Beatles songs, but that's OK with me -- I'd rather play one of my Really Good songs than a Pretty Good Beatles song anyway.
It really is the perfect venue for me -- it's got the same 70's-era vibe that me and my material do. The people who show up are my perfect "target audience". Even (especially?) the artist/vendors from the surrounding booths come around to listen, when you'd think they'd be jaded by having heard all the bands that play there every day. The lady in the next booth over brought her husband by and asked me to play "Hey, Jude" again for him, she'd liked it so much.
The worst part is the schedule, where I'm required to play for a half hour, and take a half hour break -- off and on for five hours (i.e., five half hours playing, four half hours waiting). The opposite half hours are filled by the very loud band that plays on the main stage.
It's difficult because the "cold start" first song is always the hardest, and by the end of the half hour, I've got an audience assembled who are invariably wanting more, and loudly complain that I'm quitting on them. It's also tough because I can only fit about seven songs in a half hour, so I don't want to waste any time on "B-list" songs, or songs that, even if requested by one person, are "niche" and won't be interesting to the rest of the crowd.
But the rules are the rules, and I didn't want to break them and risk getting left out next year. Flatteringly, I ended up with several groups of people who came back set after set, taking the stopping of the main stage band as their cue to come back to my little stage.
I guess the five cold starts gave me a chance to sprinkle in more Beatles songs (to appease the Festival people, if not the audience) because I get to choose that one, before the Requesting starts. I told the audience that we ought to prioritize Beatles songs, but people kept saying that they'd already heard enough Beatles for one day, and wanted something different.
I sold lots of CDs, including one to one of the ladies who works behind the counter of the restaurant that the stage is next to, and four (!) to a guy who wanted to give them out to his friends. First time for that, I'm pretty sure.
So overall, despite the annoying schedule, it's the best gig ever, for me. I hope they have me back next year, for even more dates, please.
After three months of effort, I finished building my Martin 000-28 guitar on Saturday. One should be able to presume that the time-honored design and direct-from-Martin materials would tend to result in a "good" finished guitar, but there are infinite variables in the building process that can affect the outcome, so although I was a careful and meticulous as I could muster, there were no guarantees.
Of course, what a guitar should sound like is entirely subjective, but my initial impression is that it's pretty good. Maybe even pretty darn good.
First issue is playability. It needs to be built *extremely* precisely to play in tune. I seem to have cleared that hurdle. It neck also needs to be at a precise angle to make the action playable, and I seem OK there, too.
Inexplicably though, it seems "stiff" to play, as though it's strung with medium instead of light strings. That's confusing, since the scale length is a half inch *shorter* than the Taylor, so the tension should be less. It could be the action being a little too high still, since I adjusted it conservatively for the first go around, but it seems to be more than that. My only guess is the Martin strings that they included are somehow stiffer than the ones I'm used to, so I'm going to restring it and see what happens.
As far as the sound, the highs are crystalline and sustain forever. It immediately brings to mind a music box, and the high-capoed tinkly songs sound great. The bass is strong, and less brassy than what I'm used to on my Taylor.
Unexpectedly, we got cleared to go play on the street corner in Laguna, although it was cold and gloomy. That suited my fine, as I expected there to be nobody around and a shirt outing, in case the guitar was unsuitable in some way. Turned out, the weather in Laguna was way nicer than at home, and we ended up playing for lots of people for five and a half hours. That gave me the chance to try every kind of song I know -- soft quiet fingerpicked ones, hard strummed fast ones, and everything in between. And, I have to say, they all sounded good.
Now, obviously, the sound through the pickup and an amplifier is different than the sound acoustically. And the biggest surprise (though in retrospect it shouldn't have been) is that, since this pickup doesn't feed back on the bass notes like my Taylor notoriously does, I was able to play with a lot more bass included, making the biggest difference between the two. Now, in most cases, the extra bass was terrific, but sometimes it would obscure treble riffs that I'm used to hearing -- though clearly those riffs were only so obvious on the Taylor because of the lack of bass.
So, despite hoping that it would "sound like the Taylor", it doesn't, though maybe that's a good thing. Or maybe I'm subliminally obliged to like it more than it deserves because of all the effort I put into it. On the other hand, can you imagine going into a guitar store that only had one guitar hanging on the wall? What are the odds that that guitar is The One For You? I played dozens of guitars before choosing the Taylor model I got.
Of course, I can fall back on the Taylor, and this can make a pretty wall hanging, but time (and different strings) will tell. When the novelty wears off, I'm sure it'll be apparent which one I'd rather reach for.
