Trailmates at Ortega Oaks

We had a campout at Ortega Oaks this weekend, which was ostensibly for Trailmates, but since there are so few of us, we invited the older Princesses along, "as a recruiting tool", wink wink. So Acacia got to come along.

It was a pretty good weekend, it's a really pretty place under huge oaks. It was *really* cold on Friday night, but nice and pleasant on Saturday. We basically just hung out around the campground -- I made a swing with some rope and a piece of firewood, and we flew the little R/C planes around, despite the risk of them getting caught in the trees. Which they did several times, but we just threw things at them to get them down -- they're pretty hard to break.

On Saturday night, we had the usual array of skits from the girls, but, since we had a screen and projector all set up for the movie on Friday night, I got my computer out and showed the "Waltzing With Bears" cartoon. It was fun to see it wall-sized.

After we were out of skits, I got up and played "The Indian Princess Song", with the cue cards. Most of the Trailmates are from other Princess Nations, so they've never heard it (or sung it), and it was fun to introduce it to them. Then I played some more songs, but people started to wander off, and some of the guys were anxious to start another movie, so I quit.

I get that it's fun to watch a movie with your friends, but it always seems to me to be a waste to watch movies when you could be doing camp stuff. You can always watch a movie, but how often do you get to toast marshmallows?

K&W at Costa Mesa - 28Oct2006

It went pretty well, considering that we hadn't played together in 5 weeks, and I'd been in Japan and hadn't hardly touched a guitar for the last half of that. I did try to rehearse a little, but I didn't have much time for it, so I expected to be really rusty and screw up a lot. But I didn't, too much. I kind of watched in amazement as my hands played most of the songs by themselves. I guess someone was singing, too -- probably me, somehow.

I had a few outrageous blowouts, but surprisingly few. Overall, not a bad time -- especially since I had completely foregone the recording rig, simplifying the setup, and removing the pressure. So, I just cut loose and played. Or my hands did, anyway. Kind of fun.

We had some nice people listening in, and a bit of applause. Only one guy, a previous fan, took us up on the first-time-ever Live CD, much to my dismay after all the work I'd done on it for the last few months...

Vacation in Japan with Acacia

Acacia and I spent 9 days in Japan! It was a terrific trip, but too long, complex, and picture-laden to report on here, so I created a specific webpage for it:

http://members.cox.net/acacia.comer

Check it out!

Princesses at Camp Surf!

By fortunate coincidence, the Trailmates (Geneva's "Princess" group) and Acacia's Princess Nation shared a trip to "Camp Surf", in Imperial Beach, south of San Diego. It's right on the beach, with cabins full of bunk-beds, and a big mess hall with darn good food. Which is a good thing, 'cuz they have surfboards and body-boards available, with lessons, and that surfing is hard, hungry, work.

Geneva tried to surf for a while, but decided that body boarding was more her speed, but that's in a separate part of the beach. So I spent most of the time with Acacia. She did pretty well, and had one fabulous ride, standing up all the way almost until the dry land. It was tough on me, though, 'cuz she'd ride in (standing or not), and I'd *walk* in, and help her walk the board back out, over the waves, to deep enough water to ride another one. So I was walking twice as much as her, and walking though waist-high water is some real exercise.

They also have archery and a climbing tower, and a cool little craft where you get to decorate a little wooden surfboard (really a woodworker's "biscuit"). I took a stab at putting a Hula Girl on mine, and it's not half bad, for an inch-tall painting. Check that, and lots more pictures here.

The campfire on Saturday night was an all-skits affair, but I stuck myself in the schedule 'cuz I knew that if the night went by without "Waltzing With Bears", there'd be trouble. I didn't want to hog up too much of the time, but was persuaded to do "Lollipop Tree" too, by audience chant/demand. Afterwards, the guy who runs the camp gave me an inadvertent compliment by assuming that I was a "professional musician that they'd brought in".

All-in-all, a great weekend -- best "campout" in a long time. *And*, a great way to spend my birthday.

K&W at SCP - 23Sept06

Really good. We had good response most of the night, and I played and sang exceptionally well. Coincidence? I think not. Also helping: I was kind of feeling like I had "pretty good" takes of every song we need for the CD, so I relaxed a little and captured "even better" takes of both "Don't Get So Down On Yourself" and "Long, Long Time", and maybe some others, too.

I think, with this set, that we have every song we need for the CD -- I just have to get 'em all found, clipped, processed, and burn it. It's been *far* harder to get done than I expected, but I guess that's the rule with most everything, and I won't bore you with why.

I now have 4 weekends off: next weekend is me and the girls at Surf Camp, the weekend after is "free" (with lots of stuff to do), and the next two will find Acacia and I in Japan.

But I've been bringing a computer in the car every day, 'cuz I have about 50 minutes a day waiting in the parking lot of the bus station for Geneva to come home from school. That gives me a good chance to edit, process, etc. the recordings, and it just may come together, bit by bit.

K&W at Costa Mesa - 15Sept06

A pretty fun night. That place is so full of noise that I didn't expect to be able to get any decent recordings, so I just kind of blew off worrying about it (though the recorder was running). Naturally, I play a lot looser when I don't have the pressure, and end up playing and singing better, and having more fun.

Costa Mesa is usually pretty full of people, and the physical arrangement isn't bad -- lots of people are close enough to hear, though not necessarily within sight. So we had plenty of people, but they were mostly being aloof and buried in their books, papers, and computers. We had some clapping for some songs, and total silence for others.

Then, around 9, a little family came in with two cute little girls, for whom I am a known sucker, so I played some kid songs for them. At the end of each song, I looked around the room to see if any of the adults in the area were at all interested, but no one gave me any indication that they cared one way or the other, so I ended up playing to the girls (and their parents) for quite a while. They must have appreciated it, 'cuz after a few songs, the little girl got up and put some money in the jar, and after a while more, she got up, took a CD, and put some *more* money in the jar.

Anyway, despite the generally ho-hum response, the performance was pretty good -- my voice has been really good to me lately -- and we may have accidentally gotten a CD-worthy version of "You Were On My Mind", which has been eluding us so far.

K&W at Yorba Linda - 08Sept2006

I hadn't been out Yorba Linda since February (though Warren had). It's a pretty nice setup, and we usually get a decent response, if not-so-much by way of tips. It's remarkable how much the architecture influences the success of the performance. You can do bad in a good joint, and do good in a bad joint, but the other two combinations are far more likely.

I felt like it was a lot more of a "classic" K&W performance than last week at SCP. I was more relaxed -- both generally, and in regards to the Live CD Song Capturement Project -- and less focused on getting specific songs. Probably that was due to the audience's non-rapt, but extant, attention, so I was playing songs I thought they'd like, and a lot of requests.

Unfortunately, Warren wasn't feeling well, so he just kind of pretended to be playing, very quietly. I guess he was afraid to try to play out loud while his head wasn't in it. I carried on, of course, and my voice was in excellent form again. It sure is fun to be able to hit those high notes without feeling like I'm straining, and sounding like it.

Surprise of the night: a young girl who arrived late and didn't see the song lists asked for "American Pie". Geneva also likes the new rendition that Madonna put out, so I had written it out and put it in the "Learning Section" of The Book, and I've been tinkering with it, but never did it in public. Since this girl asked specifically, I played it, and pretty much got through it (though it was (and Madonna's is) a truncated version). Fun.

We may have even picked up a song or two for the CD, but it would be better to get them when Warren's actually audible. Next time is loud, bang-ey, Costa Mesa though, where the odds of getting a quiet take are pretty slim. Good chance to just let the recording go and have fun, though.

K&W at SCP - 01Sept2006

Kind of a strange night. Warren was held up at work, so after stalling as long as I could, I played the first 5 songs without him. It's hard enough to just Start Out with him there -- without is even worse.

But we did OK, after settling in. My brother came by, and I enlisted him to take some video with my vidcam -- which in retrospect was a stupid idea. We'd like to have some video clips of us playing, of course, but since I'm still trying to capture some songs for the Live CD, I was obliged to stare down at the book to try to get through the songs mistake-free, which, I'm sure, makes for some pretty unattractive video footage (I haven't looked yet). We'll have to try again sometime when the CD is over with.

We did manage to get some good (audio) takes, though -- especially at the very end of the night. At least two, and maybe four, of those takes will end up on the CD. But there are still a few "essential" songs that have so-far eluded us, so, next stop: Yorba Linda on Friday.

Geneva Got Her Braces Off!

They'll be sticking other miscellaneous little things in there to keep 'em where they belong, but she's pretty glad rid of the railroad tracks. She says it feels really strange, but she's happy to get used to it. And to get to eat all those forbidden foods -- not that she was really avoiding 'em...

K&W at SCP - 05Aug2006

Another surprising evening. The usual contingent of Asian students inexplicably weren't there, and the place was moderately filled with Regular People, who were reading, but also paying some at-least-partial attention.

I was really hoping to get some clean, flub-free, songs recorded for the Live CD project, even if it meant doing the same songs more than once. Fortunately, the audience was uncharacteristically fluid -- people coming and going -- so I was able to repeat the target songs without subjecting the same people to them over and over. That was lucky.

But, the notebook I've been using to record these long sessions finally (and predictably) ran out of hard drive space, without so much as an error message. At the end of the gig, I thought I'd saved the file like always, but when I got home the machine was hung. So I had to crash it off, losing any data that was still in the program. Fortunately, there's a way to recover and reassemble the zillion tiny temp files the program was making, so I was able to get the first 2 hours (of 3) back. Unfortunately, I was definitely at my best in that final hour, so most of the good stuff is lost.

Still, we did get some good takes, though not all of the songs I would like to get onto the CD. So, we're gonna have to wait until at least one more gig (Costa Mesa on the 26th) to finish the CD. This gives me time to edit and finalize the songs we do have, and to figure out which ones we need (or need better renditions of) to try to snag in CM.

Other than all that, it was a really good gig. We got a lot of attention from the rotating audience, and a lot of people stuck around to the bitter end and came up to say nice things. Just as I was starting to announce that we had to pack up, a nice lady (and apparent repeat-customer) raised her hand and called for an "encore" of "Waltzing With Bears". Despite already being late to start the tear-down, how could I refuse?

Lots of people seem to have noticed the tip jar this time, and we made $62 (!), an almost-record, and certainly a record for that place. That was partially explained by the sale of 9 CDs, including one lady who brought one up to me as we were packing up to ask how much they cost. I gave her my standard "Whatever they're worth to you" line, and sent her back towards the tip jar. I guess she wanted to make sure I knew how much she thought it was worth, 'cuz she came back over to me a while later and forced a twenty into my hand. Maybe she didn't have anything smaller...

K&W at CM - 28July2006

Shocking! Last week at SCP, the place was near-empty, and dead silent. I expected about the same this week -- in fact, I was counting on it, to facilitate continued work on our "Live" CD. But, there were *lots* of people there, and they were in a mood to listen, too. I'd say it was the best audience we've ever had at that store. Lots of nice folks, listening attentively, asking for songs off the list, and even tipping a fair bit.

There was a friendly lady with a cowboy hat and 9-ish-year-old son, who asked for a song, and right after that, I looked over at her (she was pretty far away), and she mouthed "Puff, the Magic Dragon" at me, which, surprisingly, I understood perfectly clearly. She was apparently trying not to embarrass her son, or maybe she just didn't want to shout across the whole café (again). It was fun, though. Didn't know I could read lips.

It was strange/stupid to be disappointed (sorta) about having a decent audience for a change. My playing was pretty good, voice OK (but too tired too soon -- I think I'm warming up in the car too much). My guitar was sounding better than ever, 'cuz I took some of Warren's advice and tweaked the tone knobs to better places. I'd basically had them set to "all middle", since I'd stopped using the under-saddle pickup and have been using the internally mounted mic, and didn't realize that I'd never experimented with 'em. Even with the "default" tone knob settings it was way better, but with a little tuning, it sounds really good now.

I guess we managed to get two of the songs we "need" for the CD done right, but not all of them. I made plenty of mistakes, but some of the coffee staff at that store are particularly insensitive to trying to keep quiet while the band is playing, so there are some songs with nasty noises in them.

Which leaves us with one more chance before I reach my patience limit (and we have a three-week lay-over 'til the next gig) -- this coming Saturday we're back at SCP, with, presumably, the dead silent "recording studio" atmosphere.

K&W at SCP - 21July2006

Bad -- and good! We had the usual crop of studying Asians, and a few people just reading, but nobody particularly wanted to hear us play. SCP is usually that way, but this time even more so. We played to mostly dead silence. Maybe halfway through, some new people came in and clapped, quietly, but we never raised much attention. But...

Since we're trying to build a Live CD, the lack of (a) noise, and (b) need to "connect with the audience" allowed me to concentrate exclusively on getting the song played and sung correctly. I was even able to just stare at the chord sheets, rather than trying to look up, as I usually do, and lose my place and screw up, as I usually do. My voice was in fine form, and I played pretty well. Warren seemed to be doing good work as well.

So, we were able to collect a *lot* of "good takes" of songs. Enough to build the Live CD from this performance alone, though there are a few songs that I'd like to have on the disc that we either didn't do, or that I screwed up. We play again this Friday (in Costa Mesa), and I'm hoping to fill those gaps, and get this Live CD project done.

K&W at Castille - 10June2006

After the resounding success of our gig at the Elementary Arts Academy last month, I asked Acacia's teacher if they'd like us to come down and do the same at her school. She loved the idea, got permission from the principal, and we were all set up for the Friday before the last week of school.

We played multiple lunch shifts again, 1&2, then 3&4, and then the 5th grade, so we started out with our usual kids' stuff, but, based on our experience at OCEAA, we had some rock 'n' roll ready for the bigger kids. I even brought along my electric guitar.

I was a total blast, of course, though not much of an artistic triumph. I was pretty over-excited (i.e., mildly panicked) the whole time -- did some songs too fast, the rest *way* too fast, and sang miserably. One highlight was when I started singing "Fun, Fun, Fun" to the tune of "Roll Over Beethoven" -- an honest mistake since they're the same song (in the guitar), but still...

The kids went pretty crazy for it, I'm afraid. We had them all packed up next to us (good thing the janitor put out some traffic cones!), dancing, screaming, bouncing up and down, and shouting out suggestions for the next song. We got asked to "Do some AC/DC!" a lot -- how are these kids hearing hard rock from 15 years before they were born?!?

But, not so coincidentally, we had worked up AC/DC's "Long Way To the Top", which was featured in the movie "School of Rock". We saved it for the end, and I completely botched it up. It was too fast, badly sung, *way* too much distortion on my guitar (I over-drove my little amp and it sounded great, but when I started the actual song, I played louder and that over-drove the big amp. Distorted distortion doesn't really work.), and to top it off, during Warren's big solo, I stepped on the cable and unplugged myself, leaving Warren truly *solo*. I scrambled it back together, and faded back in, and he shouted out when we were about to hit the next "thing" so we made it through, but I don't know how it could have gone much worse.

But they loved it! Kids are a great audience, especially when you're a not-so-great band. Acacia came home and said that "a bajillion" kids came up to her to tell her to thank us, and/or to ask "was that really your dad?" I guess she'll be famous, at least for the last 4 days of school. Good thing they took it as "cool dad" rather than "geek dad".

We had a great time, too, and will certainly consider doing more of these, even after Acacia moves on to middle school. And, I invited the YMCA Princess Program Director to come by, and she thought we were "wonderful", and that the kids "love you guys and you're great with them". I'm working up to offering to come play at YMCA functions, picnics, etc.

Princess Campout in san Diego

Low turnout for our tribe, but a pretty fun campout anyway. Daleen kinda liked the less-large crowd, which made it more friendly.

First thing Saturday, every year, is the Sand Sculpture Contest. This year, in homage/sympathy to the "theme", we/I built a penguin. He actually came out cuter than the drawings -- usually it's the other way around. I had less time than usual, so it's not as finessed as usual, but I was sufficiently sunburned already, so maybe it's for the best.

At Saturday night's campfire, the Hosting Tribe had decided to try something different, so instead of skits, each tribe had to come up with a video, which were projected in alphabetical order. Most of the other videos were invented mini-movies starring the girls and/or dads, and were pretty cute, if usually overlong to make their point. They each had a flavor of "Ain't our daughters the cutest!", which, frankly, falls in the same category as watching somebody else's vacation slides.

Our "Penguins on a Bus" video (see the "San Mateo Campout with Acacia" blog entry 6 previous to this one), on the other hand, involved the girls only as puppeteers, never showing their faces or names. I came up with that specifically to avoid the "other peoples' kids" syndrome, but I was the only one. I think it was more entertaining this way, but I feel a little bad about it, in retrospect. I could, at least, have put their names in a credits sequence (but what about the girls that couldn't be there?).

Anyway, it was well received, and immediately followed by my "Waltzing With Bears" cartoon. That went over even better, I think. I was watching the audience from up front, since I've seen the cartoon before (several million times by now), and they seemed to be enjoying it. Most of them were singing softly along for the choruses, and laughed out loud in a few places -- especially the scene where the bears "drag him away". I happen to know the guy who runs the Friendly Spirit Nation website pretty well (me), so it's posted up there for future generations to discover.

Sunday morning was the annual hand-off ceremony, ringing out the old chiefs and in the new. Of course, I'm Website and Music Guy for life, but they throw me a plaque every year in appreciation. Rodney said some really nice things about me, and several guys actually stood up during my acknowledgement round of applause. They managed to talk me into One More Year (which is feasible because of Acacia's pretty-good attitude about it), so "I'll be back." But the year after, I think they're gonna miss me.

The Littlest Beatle

Acacia had to do a biography project in school (5th grade), and she chose Paul McCartney. She was doing her research (on line, natch), and playing non-stop Beatles songs in the background, apparently for inspiration. It was too cute to hear her back there, singing along with "Lucy in the Sky" and "Yellow Submarine", etc., while she was searching the web and typing up her report.

They had to build a presentation board with pictures and stuff, and, last Tuesday, get up and talk about their person, dressed up to be them. (Geneva was Ben Franklin three years ago, and I bent her up a pair of "bifocals" out of baling wire.)

So, of course, Acacia wore my old "Sergeant Pepper" coat, and put red tape stripes down her pants. That, along with her "growing my bangs out" retro-seventies shag look, made a pretty cute combination, even if it doesn't look a lot like Paulie. She loves the jacket, and wants to wear it all the time now, even though (because?) her hands don't poke out of the sleeves.

K&W - SCP 20May2006

Good ol' "No Clapping!" SCP. It's pretty hard to get anything out of the "audience" (I use the term loosely) there.

My throat was all kludged up, so I sounded kinda "furry", but not really "bad". I had control and range, just with an uncharacteristic sound. Still, because of the "library" feel there, nobody seems to want to clap. So we got no response except smiles until the last half-hour or so when the atmosphere finally loosened up a little.

The good part was that I didn't bother to record the gig ('cuz of my throat), so I was a lot more loose myself. When the recorder's going, I feel the pressure to try to Make No Mistakes. With a screwed-up-anyway voice, and no recorder, the pressure was off. Liberating, really. Made it a lot of fun, even with no clapping.

But, it turns out, although they "couldn't" clap, they were apparently liking it, 'cuz at the end, I was making the obligatory "There are some CDs and business cards over there" speech, and people got up and went over there! Didn't expect *that*! We made $30, and sold 4 CDs -- probably a record for that place.

An older guy asked if we knew any "Peter, Paul and Mary" songs, and we do, but it's "Puff". He said we "sound like the Sixties". Hmmm. Then I remembered that I learned "Lemon Tree" for Dad's CD, so I pulled that out and managed it pretty well, considering that I don't practice it much and it's a lot more complicated than it sounds. It's fun to be able to satisfy a random request like that, even if it only happens sometimes.

KC at "It's a Grind" MV - 12May2006

A new coffee shop opened up just down the hill from my house, so naturally I offered to come play there, and after some stalling to "get on their feet", I got booked. It was quite low-key -- maybe 20 people over the course of the night, and never more than 10 at a time. But the owner was there (asked for "Georgia"), and seemed pleased enough. As he left, he said he'd get in touch with me about scheduling a next time.

Originally he had me booked for Saturday night, but he called two weeks ago and moved me to Friday, without much explanation. There was a little plastic stand thing there with a printout of the month's activities calendar, showing just 4 things (one was me), and nothing on Saturday, so I just don't get it. Before Friday, my two theories were: (1) He had something else lined up, but it fell through and he was too embarrassed to call and move me again, and (2) Saturdays are really crowded and he didn't want to risk an untried act on his big night (or, maybe, he just didn't want to have the hassle when it's a big night anyway).

But, I drove down there at 8:30 on Saturday night and it was almost empty (3 people and a very bored coffee girl), so now I have a third theory: Saturdays are dead, and he didn't want me to waste my time.

The good part, I guess, is that he set me up just to the right of the door, and I set the amp on my left. There were no little tables, so I put my little sign and the tip jar on top of the amp (on its stand, but as low as it goes so the top was just shoulder height). That meant that everyone passed very close to the jar on their way out, and most folks dropped in a buck, or the change they got from their to-go coffee order, as they left. I made $13.86. Woo-hoo! No more bread-lines for me!

The sound was kind of echo-ey, but nowhere near as bad as the school (of course). Toward the end, four teen-agers came in, and were *remarkably* insensitive to the live music that was going on. They stood right in front of the amp (they kind of had to, to get to the coffee order spot), and shouted at each other to be heard over the music. Never a glance at me. After they got their drinks, they sat down, and continued shouting over the music. I spun the amp a little, to shoot it towards the other people who were there, but even then, they were louder than me. I turned up as much as I could, but hit the feedback threshold and couldn't go any higher, so I just toughed it out until the end.

They struck me as kids who encounter loud music everywhere they go, and are completely comfortable with it, and shouting louder than it, to chat with their friends. Live or boombox doesn't seem to make any difference. Used the back of one of my songlists as scratch paper to write down phone numbers, too. Not the worst behavior that I've seen, but I sure hope my kids never grow up to treat the world with such disrespect.

Anyway, it was Good Enough -- I'll give it another go. My apprehension was clearly unfounded. A lot like Tully's, really. Not many people, not much response -- the "crowd" was just too small to support any amount of clapping -- but there was some occasional genuine appreciation. It may build up some...

K&W - OCEAA, 11May2006

OK, that was pretty weird. We got a call from an Indian Princess mom who works at the Orange County Educational Arts Academy, which is sort of the elementary school version of the High School of the Arts that Geneva coincidentally just got into. She'd heard the "Waltzing With Bears" CD (a few million times, no doubt) because all the Princesses have one by now, and was wondering if we'd like to come down and play during lunchtime. A strange request, but we're in this for the Stories, good or bad, so, sure, we'll give it a go.

They have five lunch shifts, which spread over a too-long time span, so we decided to do the three middle shifts, skipping the Kindergartners, and the 6th graders. We played in the cafeteria, to maybe 50 or 70 kids at a time, while they were eating, shouting, etc. The place was *outrageously* echo-ey, so the sound was really strange. It didn't bother me so much as make me think that the kids weren't really getting the songs, and especially, the words. I wasn't getting any reaction to the Funny Parts, so I had to assume that they couldn't understand any lyrics.

So, I settled on doing songs that they'd already know, like "Puff", and "You've Got a Friend In Me". But as the older kids started coming in, they were asking for "some rock and roll", so we did "Love Potion Number Nine", and "Roll Over, Beethoven", and finally, "Take Me To the River". Those went over pretty well, probably because they didn't require any comprehension of the lyrics to have some rhythmic merit.

The kids were pretty enthusiastic, if only because we were Something Different. Some of them were clearly enthralled, and others were having fun at "pretending to be at a concert", with hands waving in the air, etc. One could take that as "making fun of", but I don't think they were being malicious about it.

Compared to the Indian Princess audience that I'm used to (and that all know me (and my songs)), these kids were less appreciative. But compared to the usual Borders audience, they were worshipful! Warren was pretty pleased by that, and thinks we ought to look into doing more of these. The teachers all know me down at Acacia's school, so I think they'd let us come in sometime and do that. I guess I'll email her teacher and make a proposal.

San Mateo Campout with Geneva, May2006

Back at San Mateo like last weekend, this time with Geneva and the Trailmates. (Good thing it's my favorite campground.)

I had volunteered, somehow, to lead the Talent Show that we (I) decided would work better than trying to get this very-low-turnout group to do tribe-based skits or whatever. I was afraid that everybody would beg off, but I managed to get all 12 girls up there doing something. They seemed to have fun, and there wasn't a lot of anxiety about it, probably thanks in great part to the "team building" games that Todd had set up earlier that morning. Once they were all friends, they didn't seem all that worried about performing for each other.

We had two violins (one of them Geneva, of course), a viola, a flute, a recorder, a guitar, a dance, some gymnastics, a magic show, and some jokes. Then we did karaoke for a while so the dads would get some exposure.

On Saturday we got to go down to the beach to see the tide pools, which Geneva really loves. She'd have explored all day, if we'd had the time. And on Sunday, we finally got to go down to the stables on Camp Pendleton and do the horseback trail ride. And after that we went to Joe's Crab Shack in Oceanside, and I bought her a really cute cowboy hat in the gift store.

Pretty good weekend for her, which made it a pretty good weekend for me.

San Mateo Campout with Acacia, April 2006

Great campout, as it is every year. On Friday night, instead of the usual movie, I volunteered to do a "Kids' Concert". I was worried that I would be less entertaining than "Ice Age 2", but the everybody seemed to be OK with it. The surprise of the night was when I did "Love Potion Number 9", which has been in the Kids Section of the Book for a long time, but never gets requested, so I don't do it much. But I did it anyway, and it went over really big. When I played at the Saturday night campfire, and again at the Sunday morning "Chapel", some kids were calling out for me to do it again. Raucously. Who knew?

On Saturday, we implemented my idea for the "video" that we're supposed to submit to be shown at the end-of-the-year Family Campout in June. Each tribe is supposed to do whatever they want. Nobody in my tribe had any ideas, so, naturally, I had to come up with one, which was to do the "Penguins on a Bus" sketch, but with sock puppets which the kids would make, use in the play, and take home. A craft and a video, all in one. I spent two weeks designing the penguin puppets for cuteness and build-ability, and making the cop and bus driver, and the motorcycle, and getting ready to build the bus at the site, to accomodate however-many girls we ended up with. Planning nightmare, 'cuz whatever I remembered to bring was gonna be it -- no running out to the garage for some duct tape or whatever.

It came out quite well. Took forever, but we had a good long morning to do it in, and the kids could go play while the dads worked on the "set". I was really surprised at the level of participation -- all the dads helped out, a lot. Frequently, on this kind of thing, they all just sort of get a "This is Keith's thing" attitude, and walk away. This time they all pitched in, and it's a good thing, too, 'cuz it was pretty complicated to get it all working.

You can check it out here.

The link is to an 8 megabytes file, but you might find it's worth it.

The original idea was to do it in one take, in the camera, and to submit the tape, foregoing any editing on the computer and that whole can of worms. Didn't happen, but since I had to go to the computer anyway, I was able to throw in some titles and stuff at the beginning that make it a lot more fun anyway.

By the way, the name is a parody of the upcoming Samuel Jackson thriller "Snakes on a Plane", which won't be out until August, but is getting lots of buzz on the Internet, probably only 'cuz the name is so cool/funny. I know nobody will get it, but it's just my little joke.

K&W at SCP - 21Apr2006

Same old sleepy South Coast Plaza. Mostly Asian kids studying again, but we did have a familiar return customer family with a little girl. Unfortunately, she pretty much tuned us out when she got involved in a book she was reading. Then again, good for her.

And my old boss, and Warren's old acquaintance, Tim, stopped by, and seemed to enjoy himself. Stayed for a good while anyway. Obviously woulda rather been playing than listening, but I have that problem, too.

The recording turned out pretty good again, though a bit overblown so the loud songs may be too badly clipped. But I think we may have turned in some decent performances, so we'll see what's useable.

Next weekend is my full-length "Kids' Concert", which has never been attempted before. I've tried to re-work-up the kids' songs in the book, 'cuz, since they shut down RSM for music, we haven't had much call to play 'em. Odds are, though, that I won't have many people there to worry about anyway. Stay tuned...

Disneyland!

We finally broke down and bought our Disneyland Annual Passes, but it was really crowded so we didn't get to do much. So we came back on Sunday, and it was really crowded again. Starting to wonder about my investment, there.

But, it was right around Spring Break, so it's probably not representative of the rest of the year. Our idea is to go over there a bunch of times after work on weekday evenings. The best part about an Annual Pass is that you don't have to "get your money's worth" every time. And you can enjoy the littler things, 'cuz you'll have other chances to get to the "E ticket" stuff.

We did manage to get on "Indiana Jones" on Sunday, and it was Acacia's first time. No problem. It's really kind of too rough, and too fast, and you don't really get a chance to figure out what you should be afraid of before it's gone anyway. They need to learn some subtlety in there.

We also saw the "White Witch" from Narnia. She's the quintessential "Ice Queen", and, amazingly, Disneyland didn't dilute that by making her a Nice Lady, "Here, sit on my lap." The lady they have playing her looks great, moves all "regally", and only barely tolerates her "visitors". There are some pages that are advising the people in line how they'd better act, so she doesn't "get mad" at them. It's quite a hoot.

K&W - CM 08Apr2006

Good night, sedate audience. That Costa Mesa store tends to be pretty quiet, but I had some fun with a few people. The best part was that my voice was working *really* well -- I was doing stuff that I usually can't manage, and hitting notes with ease that usually come out strained. Don't know why, but it's *so* cool when that happens. I usually attribute it to being warmed up, but I hadn't had much chance to sing all week, so I guess it was just the phase of the moon...

Got some more good recordings for the Live Album, too, which I guess I've come to think of as inevitable. Sometimes I wish it were even *more* quiet in the joint, so the recordings don't have chatting, grinders, water running, dishes clattering, or whatever in the background. It's reasonably rare that I'm singing well, and not making glaring guitar mistakes -- it's a shame when some background noise messes up the take. Oh, well.

And there were some new "Borders Coming Events" flyers there, with only the Orange County stores represented -- mostly the book signings and Story Times listed, but filling the remaining space with some small percentage of the bands that will be playing. There were copies of both March and April's flyers, and we were listed in both of them -- one of our several gigs, apparently chosen at random, in each. And in one of them, they printed our "publicity picture", though only our mothers would recognize us in that half-toned postage-stamp sized shot. Still, there were lots of bands that didn't get a mention at all, so somebody must like us, somewhere.

Geneva Made It!

We got the Official Letter from the Orange County High School of the Arts yesterday, and Geneva got in. She was accepted in both of the Conservatories that she tried out for, Creative Writing and Integrated Arts. That’s great for her, and also good news for Acacia, since she’ll be going for Integrated Arts next year for Junior High, and if Geneva’s resume was sufficient, Acacia should be OK, too.

You can’t have a “double major” of course, so Geneva will choose Creative Writing. This will be *so* great for her!

K&W - CM and MV 31Mar and 01Apr2006

Double Header weekend. It was our first time back at Costa Mesa/Newport for a long time. I think they stopped having music, and just started up again. The layout is a bit problematic, facing in to the café, with our backs to the store, but it’s like that at Mission Viejo so we’re used to it.

The sound was pretty good, and I finally got a decent rig to record the live shows with so the recording came out really good. I still don’t know *why* I’m trying so hard to record these sessions, but now that we have both of these nights with decent sound and some decent performances, we’re thinking of putting together a “K&W Live” CD. The sound won’t be as good as the studio CD, but it’s pretty close, and we’re better than we were back in April 2004. Not to mention that we have some new songs that deserve to be on a CD somewhere.

Unexpectedly, my in-laws showed up, as did my brother and his wife. That was nice. There are several songs I carry around in the book, just for my brother to hear, but I tend to lose my ability to remember stuff like that when I’m Up There, so I didn’t play them. Next time for sure...

Mission Viejo was unusually nice this time. There were none of The Regulars there, so we didn’t have to compete with their social club for sonic space. And we always play so much better when we’ve just had a “dress rehearsal” the night before. Unfortunately, I’m also tired in fingers and voice, so I only play better for the first half, and then I fall apart for the second. And, having just set the gear up the night before, we were faster roadies than usual, so we were ready to go early, and played from 7 sharp to 10:30. Looong set. We usually clock 42-44 songs in a night -- this time was 53.

Trailmates in Anza Borrego

Geneva and I went camping with the Trailmates last weekend, out in the Anza Borrego desert. It's been a long time since we've been camping together, so it was really nice to do that.

They have a "must-see" hiking trail to "The Palm Grove" that's supposed to be 1.5 miles, but I think they got the decimal point in the wrong place. Or maybe it just seems that way because a lot of the time you're climbing up rocks so it's like stairs, up and down, all the way there.

But it was worth it -- we saw lots of desert life on the way, cactus and such, and got pretty close to a bunch of longhorn sheep. And the Grove itself is pretty cool, except there's brown water constantly dripping out of the trees. We never did figure out what that was -- but maybe we're better off not knowing.

Geneva brought her new camera, and it was her first chance to point it at something other than silly girls at slumber parties. She's actually pretty good with nature shots -- some of her best pictures are here.

Snow Trip!

We finally managed to cut loose some time to drive up to see the snow. We just drove up to Mount Baldy, which is surprisingly close, really -- only about an hour drive.

We took the dogs, who didn't seem that concerned about running around in the snow. It was nice fluffy "powder", which crunches into snowballs really easy, so we were throwing snowballs at each other, and the dogs were freaking out that we were not throwing the balls for them! So, we tossed some small snowballs to the dogs, who caught them, which shattered the balls except for whatever was trapped in their mouths, which they didn't seem to mind just crunching down.

Just as we got to a good place to stop, it started actively snowing. I think it's the third time in my whole life that I've been in actual snowing-down snow. At first it was little balls, like someone had opened up a beanbag chair, but after a while it turned into these sticky, fluffy flakes. Cool.

And cold! Naturally, the girls were froze to the bone pretty soon, soaking pants and frozen fingers, and the snowing was getting worse, so we packed up and came back down before it got too much to negotiate without chains. Of course, it never did get thick enough to pile up on the road, but what do I know about snow?

Geneva's "Audition" at OCHSA

Yesterday I took Geneva to the Orange County High School of the Arts for her "audition" for the Creative Writing program. We had been to the Open House, twice, and heard about the program from the director (author Jim Blaylock), and he said that this is the first time that the administration is making him do auditions, and he wasn't really sure what he was going to do.

So what he did was bring in all the kids at once, let them ask some questions, have them introduce themselves around the room, and then write a short essay/story/whatever on the topic: "If you could do anything, or be anything, what would you do or be, and why?" This is, of course, about as wide open as anything could be -- pretty much a "soft ball".

While the kids were writing, Blaylock took the parents out to another room and answered questions. There were 25 kids in the audition, and one of the dads asked how many other kids were going to audition. Blaylock said that there were 10 that were transferring in from other departments and so were kind of automatic, and 7 more that couldn't make it that day or something. Since the total he's gonna take is 43, and that totals 42, another dad did the math and asked "exactly how good our chances were". Blaylock said that he's disallowed from saying so, but that if you were here at the audition, you were "very, very likely" to make it in.

In retrospect, he appears to have just done what he's always done -- chosen from the written portfolio submissions -- and he's tacked on this "audition" as a formality, as directed by his boss. Apparently, if you didn't make the grade, you just didn't get an invitation to the "audition". It would probably be *possible* to get cut from the audition -- if, for example, your essay was so much lamer than your portfolio that it was clear that someone had "helped" too much, or if you showed up, I don't know, drunk or something.

Anyway, it won't be official until we get the letter from the school, but we're pretty sure she's made it. I'm pretty thrilled for, and proud of, her. Her, and our, lives are gonna start getting even more interesting, come August.

K&W - MV 10Mar2006

Pretty good night, pretty mediocre audience. We played pretty good, and the sound was (finally!) decent, but the audience was pretty un-responsive. Luck of the draw, probably, though I can't help think that it's as much the performer's fault as the audience's if he can't elicit some response.

But, at least we got some decent recordings. As always, the last hour or so was the best part, 'cuz the sound issues are (sometimes) worked out, and I get to feeling more loose and confident. The recording isn't perfect, but it's pretty presentable.

And, because nobody seemed to care anyway, just to make it amusing for myself, I got out a bunch of songs that I seldom or never do. That made it more fun...

Indian Princesses at the Hockey Game

Our Indian Princess event for this month was a trip to the Mighty Ducks hockey game. We lost, but only barely, and it was a fun game to watch. The girls generally got the idea that we were trying to get the puck in one net, and "they" were trying to get it in the other. The more obscure rules just went by unnoticed. But they all thought it was really funny that the players got a "time out" when they were bad.

Before the game, they have a little "carnival" in the parking lot, with face painting, roller hockey, a giant slide, and a balloon animal guy. And they had supplies to make "Go Ducks!" posters, which was fun. Everybody thought my poster was amazing 'cuz I put the Mighty Ducks hockey mask logo on it, but I was just copying it from the cheerleader girl's T-shirt, so it was all win-win for me...

K&W - Cerritos 04Mar2006

OK, now that was strange. We thought it was gonna be a "Grand Opening" the way it's been at the other ones we've done, where it's really a Opening of the Seattle's Best makeover of the café, but it was an actual Grand Opening of a new physical store, across the street from the old one. It's a big, nice, new building, with the café upstairs on a sort of half-floor, looking out over the main floor with all the books. Unfortunately, the "band spot" is down this 15-foot-wide corridor, hemmed in by walls on one side and behind, and looking out over a glass half-wall into the store.

That was kind of cool, but severely constricted the size of the in-the-same-space audience -- to about 10 people. All those chairs were well-camped-in long before we got there. That's OK, we're used to playing to small audiences, and 10 is better than some we've had, but I had invited my parents to come down, since it was relatively close to where they live, and they invited, oh, everybody they know. Final count, by my reckoning, an even dozen parents, aunts, uncles, cousins, and off-spring thereof. None of whom got to like, sit down, and, like see us while we were performing. They had to settle down in various other parts of the café, so maybe they could hear us, but who knows?

On top of them, we had 4 or 5 acquaintances from the Folk Music Jam we used to go to. They were a bit more nimble or lucky, and got some seats where they could see us, at least, eventually.

We played pretty well, I think, but, as has happened *way* too often lately, the sound was screwy, or screwed up. The contained space probably had something to do with it, but we also (for the *last* time! Grrr!) tried to use the store's amp, and it started weirding out halfway through. Fortunately, I had my amp with me, and we switched to that and did OK for the last half -- when nobody was there anymore...

Essentially, it's an un-playable layout, and I think I'd turn it down if they ever ask us to play there again (unless it's for money like it was this time!), but there's not much chance of that, so we probably don't have to worry about it.

Geneva in the OC Spelling Bee

Last night was the all Orange County Spelling Bee semi-finals (for grades 6, 7, and 8). It's a written test, so all the kids have the same words -- 20 "regular" and 2 "bonus" tie-breakers. Out of 150 kids, only 2 spelled 'em all right. Geneva misspelled only one of the bonus words, everyone else misspelled one or more of the regular words. This essentially put her in third place in the room, I reckon. The bonus word she missed was "edentulous", meaning "lacking teeth". Nobody in the room ever heard of it, but apparently two kids guessed better than Geneva (or I) did.

They cut it off at 17 words spelled right, so there's 55 kids that'll be coming to the oral finals on Saturday morning. Two years ago, she came in 9th, and got $50 for her trouble. Last year she choked, and misspelled "slaughter", just 'cuz of nerves. Hopefully, this year she'll be a little less stressed.

Personally, I think these written tests are better gauges of who's the best speller (if such a thing is worth determining, especially these days). Mainly it seems more fair for all the kids get the same words. And it's easier to spell on paper than just reciting letters in the air. When is spelling out loud a necessary skill? Not to mention the stress of standing up in front of a crowd to do it.

If you're curious, here's the whole list: quizmaster, charcoal, lettuce, transaction, shale, irregular, aloof, prehistory, nozzle, diagonal, liturgy, optimism, casualty, vanilla, foolocracy, atrophy, azalea, recyclable, atoll, euphonious, with edentulous and predecessor as bonus words. (By the way, even Word's spelling dictionary has never heard of "foolocracy", but apparently it's in the Webster's they use to judge.)

K&W - MV 17Feb2005

A little better and a little worse than last time. The better part is that, for the first time ever, the "regulars" weren't there, so there was no loud talking while I was trying to sing. The worse part is that I mixed (or, more accurately, failed to mix) the sound properly, so the vocal was way louder than the guitars (or, as Warren would have it, the guitars were way quieter than the vocal).

I guess I was partially being paranoid of feedback from my guitar, since it was the maiden run of my new, inside-guitar mic system. These are famous for feedback problems, so I was keeping it kind of quiet at first, and never remembered to revisit it. Of course, from where I'm standing, I hear the acoustic output of my guitar so it wasn't "way too quiet" to me, but there wasn't enough of it coming out of the speakers, so the room sound was embarrassingly bad. I know this 'cuz I did the mic-in-front-of-a-speaker trick for the recording, and most of it is unlistenable.

The other part is that, unless I can't hear what I'm doing, I just get into the performing part and completely forget about tinkering with the sound. And I guess I could hear the vocal (like, a lot!) and my guitar too (part in the speakers, and part acoustically), so off I went. And I never worry about Warren's volume, since he has lots of knobs to play with if he wants to get louder or softer -- I figure he's where he wants to be. Still, I feel like an idiot for doing the whole gig, oblivious to the terrible sound...

A few of the softer songs turned out semi-OK on the recording, although I couldn't find my mic and so had to use the store's, which seems to have an odd sound. Anyway, I guess I sang quieter on those songs, so the mix isn't so wrong. It was the first outing for "Alison", a song I've been strumming through for years, but finally realized that I could transpose it down a little for my voice (duh), and play it with a simple fingerpick pattern -- it sounds pretty nice that way (to me, anyway). The hardest part is *not* to imitate Elvis Costello's voice/accent/delivery when you're singing it. "Funny", not "Fuh-neh". I guess that's the one I'm gonna post as "Song of the Week" on the website.

We did have two old Toshiba friends show up, Sandy Crowley (with her daughter) and Marc Tanguay. Sandy asked for all the country songs -- who knew?

I also brazenly cleared off a small table of books, moved it into the main passageway toward the exit doors, and put the CDs and tip jar out there "where no decent soul could miss it", to quote Gordon Lightfoot. It increased our usual near-zero tip level at that store to $30-something, and moved 6 or 7 CDs.

Father-Daughter Roller Skating

The Girl Scouts put on an annual Father-Daughter event, and this year it was roller skating, with a "70's" theme. This apparently meant "disco", but since nobody still has their white Travolta-suit, I don't know what they expected of us. I wore jeans and my old "hippie tie", which I actually *wore* through most of the 70's, and after Daleen cracked out the high school yearbooks (prompting gales of laughter from the girls), Acacia went with jeans and a "peasant blouse". 70's, but not "disco". Whatever.

We had a great time. I got the feel for it back after 10 minutes or so, and was zooming all over the place -- and Acacia's always been a good skater. Geneva came along to help with the picture-taking setup, and seemed to have fun doing that. She only got to skate for the last 20 minutes or so, but she didn't seem disappointed.

Fun music, too. "Brick House", "Play The Funky Music", etc. Fun to skate to.

K&W - Yorba Linda 04Feb2006

Tough one, this time. I had this great new scheme for the amplifier setup that turned out to be a disaster. We've been using the stores' amps, 'cuz they have a Monitor output jack that I'd been connecting to the computer to record, but we'd decided to try recording through a microphone put up near one of the speakers, to (hopefully) get a more balanced and "live" sound on the recording.

Well and good, but it means that we'd have my amp (with its internal speaker) in the middle, and the store's two speakers on the left and right. Lots of speakers should be good, but, anticipating possible feedback problems, I prepared my amp with a "speaker cutoff" mechanism, which the Carvin people neglected to include. Unfortunately, I didn't do the proper testing, and we found out that cutting the internal speaker also cut the External Speaker jack! So I had to leave my amp's speakers enabled, which (as I eventually realized), since it was pointed backwards at the wall behind, was feeding us a very boomy, bad, bad, sound.

We tinkered with the controls between songs, over and over, until I finally figured out that it was the StageMate's sound that was screwing everything up. We replaced my amp with the store's "brain" (no built-in speaker), and, Wow!, much better.

So, basically the whole first half was a loss, 'cuz when the sound's bad and I can't hear myself or anything except how terrible it is, I just can't perform. The sound "to the room" wasn't as bad as what we were hearing (according to the recording), but I was completely distracted by it and blew words and chords, left and right.

But, once we swapped the amp, it was all uphill from there, and we did pretty good. I thought "Love Has No Pride" went particularly well, and I've posted it as the Song of the Week on the webpage. Warren liked "You Were On My Mind", so maybe I'll remember to post that one as next week's Song, since we're not playing anywhere next weekend.

We did get a bit of appreciation at the end -- some nice ladies that were there chatting quietly the whole night thanked us, and apparently took home some CDs. We usually don't move any CDs at all at that store (nor get much in the way of tips), but in my "Thanks for coming" speech, I mentioned the CDs "if anybody wants one on the way out", and all 5 K&W discs disappeared, and a "Bears" one as well. And, oddly enough, money appeared in the jar, too. I'll have to do that again...

And, for the first time ever, someone went to the web address on the CD, found the "Send us a message" link, and did! The entire text:

I really enjoyed your performance tonight! I have your CD of children's music. I am currently in the teaching credential program, and as soon as I am a teacher I plan to use your music in my classroom. Great music!
Thanks,
Devin

Amazing! Especially after how terrible we were at the beginning...

K&W - MV 21Jan2006

It went pretty good, again. The sound tends to be pretty good there, and Warren was at the controls of the amp. He likes it up quite a bit louder than I do (or, more accurately, he's braver to "fill the room" than I am), and when it's nice and loud you get this "Voice of God" effect, and that's really fun.

Unfortunately, Mission Viejo has developed a "cast of regulars" that are there, seemingly, literally every night (one guy mentioned having seen "Jim & Warren" the previous night). That's OK, of course, and they seem to be in the right age bracket to like the tunes we do, but they pretty much think they own the place so they talk, loudly, all the time, during the songs. It seems terribly rude to me, but I suppose from their viewpoint, I'm being terribly rude to invade "their" space and start making a bunch of amplified noise.

Problem is, it's *really* distracting, and takes a great force of will for me to just power on ahead and try not to notice the commotion. It's really hard, and keeps dragging me out of my "suspension of fear" that allows me to be up there singing at all. "Dues", I guess.

On the upside, I brought my electric guitar for the first time, and used it for the more "rock" songs. That was pretty fun, and worked out well. Unfortunately, we were trying yet another recording method, so although it sounded OK in the room, the recording is unbalanced. Oh, well, there's plenty more chances, and with all the distraction, they probably weren't my best performances anyway.

K&W - Yorba Linda 13Jan2006

Pretty good. Yorba Linda can be very good to us, or sometimes not so much. Kristy and Crystal from work were there, right at the very beginning. That was really nice, 'cuz the hardest part is just getting started, and although I know that I ought to make a big, noisy announcement that we're here to play, I'm never brave enough. With Kristy there to "talk to", I was able to make an initial announcement, which got the ball rolling, people looking and listening, and requests coming in.

We got a pretty good response, and made $20 in tips, which is probably a record for that store. (It's strange how much the physical layout of the stores affects the tip jar.) Even the new coffee-making kids were loudly appreciative.

I don't really know Crystal at work -- she's new, but apparently a friend of Kristy's. I had the impression that Crystal was basically being dragged in so Kristy wouldn't be there alone after her husband had to leave for his swing-shift job. Crystal's quite young, hip, and I certainly didn't expect that she would be impressed with our set of ancient tunes.

But I ran into her in the break room on Tuesday morning, and asked her what she thought. I expected some kind of polite "You guys are really good" comment, but she practically squealed it -- *way* beyond "polite" -- and wanted to know where and when we're playing next! I was completely stunned, as I always am when teenagers and 20-somethings seem to like us.

K&W - SCP 06Jan2006

Warren and I played at South Coast Plaza on Friday. Because of Thanksgiving, Christmas and all, it's the first time we've played together since November 12th, 8 weeks ago -- our longest break since we started playing Tully's almost 4 years ago.

We did surprisingly OK, though my voice was pretty trashed from this cold that's left my head, but won't leave my throat. We both knew we'd better practice during the week, and it seems to have worked, though I made more than my usual allotment of big guitar mistakes.

But overall, pretty good. I think I got a song or two on the recording for the website that are worth hearing. We were lucky to have a friendly audience, starting out with old-Toshiba-friend Karen Reader, who's back from a 10-year stint in Kansas. Fortunately, Warren had some oblique advance warning, or neither of us woulda recognized her, but she knew us, and seemed pretty happy to see us, too.

We had polite and occasionally enthusiastic applause most of the night, but most surprising was a little round of applause at the very end, as I "signed off" -- kind of a "let's give it up one more time" round, though sans MC prompting, of course. We've never had that before.

A Tribute to My Dad

Back in September or so I had an idea to do an album of all the songs my dad used to do when he was playing guitar and we were just kids. My mom always had records going in the house, and my dad's playing and singing obviously had an influence on my getting into "the business". It was his guitar I started with, and I used his old guitar lesson books to start figuring it all out. I thought a record of me doing his old songs would be a nice "Thank you", and my mom would probably like it, too.

He started playing during the big 60's Folk Revival, and was into guys like The Kingston Trio, The Limelighters, Peter, Paul and Mary, and such. It seemed like an easy thing to do at the time -- there were 3 or 4 obvious songs, and I didn't think it would be hard to come up with enough tunes to fill an album. And since most of 'em were, supposedly, Folk Songs, it seemed like it would be easy enough to learn 'em...

But, I unexpectedly stalled out pretty early on the song list, so I asked my brother and sister, who remembered the bands involved, but not many more songs than I'd already thought of (except my sister came up with "Moon River", which I'd never have remembered). Dad's old friends Bill and Mary Jane weren't much help, either, apparently they weren't hanging out during the guitar-playing period.

Lacking a certified list (and not wanting to spoil the surprise by asking my mom), I had to rely on memory, and it was a little confusing 'cuz there were songs that I remember from my youth, but can't really place if I know the song because my dad played it on guitar, or because my mom played the record a lot. Some were obvious, and I could "hear" my dad's voice singing several of them in my head, but others -- not so much.

Anyway, once I had a list, I had to come up with the chords and work up some arrangements. That was generally pretty easy, but "Moon River" can be pretty elaborate, but I wanted to go back to the original simple style. I found several different chord sets for it, and kind of mashed 'em together, and whittled it down to a simple-sounding setup. "Lemon Tree" is a lot harder than it sounds, especially since it goes pretty quick. I came up with a cool way to play "Four Strong Winds", with Drop-D tuning, capo 2, so it works with Travis picking. Like on the Christmas CD, I overtracked some lead guitar on some of 'em, even though I don't really know how. Fortunately, I could edit together little pieces of almost-right takes into one whole-sounding solo. Don't tell anybody.

My dad and I went through his old song book after I'd given him the CD, and although there were lots of songs in there, I didn't find any that I remembered him playing (or even remembered at all), *except* "Today" (...while the blossoms still cling to the vine...), which I can totally hear him singing. I may have to record that one when I get a chance, and burn a Version 2 of the CD with that one added -- even though it's yet another slow song, in three, with the old "1, 6m, 2m, 5" chord progression; same as "Try to Remember" that's already on this CD (and a million others that aren't). Since I sound the same on every track already, it's pretty hard to figure out a way to get these almost-same songs to sound different than each other. But I'll think of something...

Anyway, I really liked playing some of those old songs, and there's nothing like just doing it to learn more about the whole recording process. And, I think it turned out pretty well, even if it was a lot of work for an audience of two.

Acacia Gets Straight A's

Not that there's anything wrong with B's...

Her report card for the first trimester of 5th grade:

Reading: A
Writing: A
     Spelling: A-
     Speaking: A-
Math: A
Social Studies: A
Science A+
Art: O
Phys Ed: O
Penmanship: S+
Technology: O

The "O" means Outstanding. Her worst subject/grade is Penmanship with a "Satisfactory Plus". Reminds me of her dad...

Christmas Songs CD

Well, I finally built my Christmas Album. I decided that it was now or never, so I just took all of Thanksgiving vacation to knock it out. I had thought that it would be pretty easy, since the "Waltzing With Bears" CD went pretty quick, but it turned out to be a bit of a nightmare.

One problem is that I don't do the Christmas songs nearly as often as I do the kids' songs, so I can't play 'em mistake-free in a take or two. In fact, some of 'em, I can't play (and sing) mistake-free at all. It's usually better to play and sing at the same time, but on songs that were hard or unfamiliar, I had to resort to playing the guitar part first, and singing over it in a separate take.

So I did a few songs with both parts together, and a few with them separate. And then my amplifier died (I need two amps (mine and the Princess one) to do two parts), so I was stuck doing all the rest of the songs in two takes, even if they were easy. That's not *so* bad, but it meant that the vocals had moved from the new amp to the old amp, which has a totally different effects (reverb) processor, and in the process of playing with all of the dead amp's knobs to try to revive it, I lost the bass and treble settings. So the reverb and EQ settings were completely different between the pre- and post-amp-death recordings.

Individually, the songs didn't sound too bad (probably since I'm not much of a "sound guy", so I don't know no better), but strung in a sequence (say, on a CD), they were desperately different-sounding. I wasted a bunch of time (this is weeknight evenings, by now) trying to modify the separate tracks' recordings to match each other, but it was mainly no-go. So I had to re-record half the vocal tracks (which were actually probably improved for it).

Then I spent the rest of the week listening to test CDs in my car on the way to and from work, just trying to get them all to sound at about the same volume. Since they were all done with different methods, on different amps, with different settings, and even different microphones, they were at all different volume levels. Anyway, enough whining -- I learned one Important Lesson: choose a method, and stick to it. (That's why the "Bears" CD went so easy -- it was all done the same way.)

But after all that, I'm mostly proud of most of it. I think the main flaw is that it's all me, all the time -- and it gets monotonous, literally. I tried to vary the sound, but, like John Hartford said, "Style is based on limitation".

To add *some* kind of variety, I dragged my old bass out and added a bass line to "Blue Christmas". Originally, Warren was gonna do me a lead solo verse, but he got too busy, so I got out my swap meet electric guitar and figured one out for myself. I think that's the thing I'm most proud of on the whole CD -- only because I've never played lead guitar, ever, so I have no idea how to do it. But I just played the song over and over while fiddling around on the electric, and some kind of thing emerged. Not sure how good it is in the grand scheme, but I like it. So I'm on that track four times: guitar, bass, vocal, and lead.

Somewhere I got the notion that my mom really likes "Silver Bells". I don't usually do that one, 'cuz it really requires the vocal harmony. But on the CD I could double track myself, so it worked. And I put in the "chimes" with the electric guitar (although it took me a zillion tries to get it (mostly), 'cuz they go by so fast), so I'm on that track 4 times, too.

On "Jolly Old Saint Nicholas", I was trying to add *something*, 'cuz it's pretty repetitive. First I tried to add autoharp, but even though it sounded pretty good live, the mic only picks up the "jangle-ness", and none of the actual, like, notes. It made it sound like one of those Gamelan bands from Java. Cool maybe, but not exactly what I was going for. So I scratched that idea, and got Acacia's cello out. Took me a while to learn how to play it well enough, but I got the hang of it, mostly, and mixed that track kind of quiet.

On the last song, "I'll Be Home for Christmas", it was clearly too short (like most of 'em), and it's just one verse repeated twice, so it was just begging for an instrumental verse in-between. The original recording I'd done was pretty good, so I split it in two and inserted a new guitar-only verse, and then added an electric guitar "solo" on top of that. I just played a slightly-ornamented version of the real tune, though -- no made-up solo this time.

Anyway, if you're reading this and don't have a copy of the CD:
(A) Who are you?!?
(B) There are MP3s at http://68.5.108.28:2222/DISK%201/Christmas%20album/MP3s/

KC - Yorba Linda 02Dec2005

Well, I had my, as it turns out, only shot at playing Christmas songs at Borders on Friday (and my first solo gig at Yorba Linda), and it didn't work out anything like I'd hoped. I played and sang OK, but the crowd just wasn't into it/me. I got a little appreciation later on from a nice older lady and a pair of Asian Studyin' Girls, but mostly dead silence.

It may have been the sound -- I was using the store's amp, and I thought it sounded really good, but the recording is way over-reverb-ed, so I wonder if that's what it sounded like in the audience. If so, I can see why they seemed so underwhelmed. (The only song that came out half-usable was "When You Wish Upon a Star", which I put up on keithandwarren.com as the Song of the Week.) I really gotta figure out how to figure out what the sound sounds like to the audience.

The only real fun I had was the little Asian girl (7-ish?) who, although terribly shy, kept creeping over to listen. I played several songs just for her, 'cuz she was actually listening. Since I'd brought a stack of the new Christmas CDs, and nobody was taking/buying them, I gave one to the little girl -- or tried to. Although I told her mom that it was a Christmas present, I'm pretty sure she snuck over and put a fiver in the jar when I wasn't looking.

We've had at least one Really Good night at Yorba Linda, but this wasn't one of them. Oh, well. The Good Ones certainly make up for the Bad Ones.

Princess Campout with Horses

Busy weekend! I ditched work a little early to get Acacia right after school and go see the new Harry Potter movie -- she had her heart set on seeing it the first day. We both really liked it.

Then we went down to the campout, arriving pretty late. But fortunately, we didn't have to set up the tent in the dark, 'cuz Acacia stayed with a friend ("camping sleepover!") and I went home to bed so I could get up early enough to go to a required Living Trust seminar on Saturday morning. After that, back down to the campout to have dinner and play at the Nation Campfire.

Which went *really* well. An unforeseen consequence of my distributing "Waltzing with Bears" CDs to essentially the whole nation is that my campfire audience suddenly has an intimate knowledge of not only the songs in my repertoire, but the full lyrics thereof. When the chief calls me up to play a song, there's a pitched battle of girls calling for their favorites. "Lollipop Tree" is a big favorite these days 'cuz they all like the part where I pretend to cry.

When I got to, inevitably, "Bears" itself, I asked if anybody knew the words, and got almost universal affirmative screaming in return. So I asked 'em to come on down and sing it with me. Fortunately, there was a pretty big stage area, 'cuz I got about 50 little girls -- and it was a ball. They were singing out, having big fun, and the dads were enjoying it, too. A lot of guys told me afterward that that was a great idea.

Sunday morning's assembly was similar. I did "The Marvelous Toy", with a lot of in-seat participation, and the dads got it in their heads to do "the wave", several times, while I was singing. Took some concentration not to lose my place with that going on out there. Later, before "The Indian Princess Song", when I repeated my plea for somebody to step up to take over the guitar playing for next year, when I'll be (supposedly) graduated out, up went a chant for "One more year! One more year!".

Flattering. And, truth be told, what with Trailmates continuing to be the bust that it is, I'm tempted. Acacia seems to be amenable, Allen and Meagan seem to want to do another year, and maybe we can talk Todd and Arielle into it... We'll see.

Anyway, after all that, Kevin (who in the Marine reserves) took a few of us who could make it to the stables on Camp Pendelton for an hour-long ride. It goes without saying that Acacia loved that part.

K&W - RSM and MV - 11/12Nov2005

Friday at RSM was kinda medium. Started off with lots of people there, played OK, but about halfway through, the place was stone empty. I've never seen a café with literally nobody in it. Fortunately, it didn't look like it was our fault -- the waiting-for-dinner crowd always empties out when their tables come up, and the others just got finished with their studying or whatever and went on home. At least, that's my story, and I'm stickin' to it. In the last half hour, though, some more people "my age" showed up and were liking us pretty good, so it ended well.

Saturday was one for the books, though. We got there, and the helpful staff had brought out the amp and two speakers, on the stands. Nice. I got there first, and started setting up all my stuff, now including a notebook computer to snag a recording, adding to the complexity. Warren got there and started running all his wires, and, since the staff had *not* cleared us a space to play in, and we needed little tables, and, and, and -- anyway, we finally had everything in place at 8:10. I fired up the amp to start the sound level setting process, and, nothing. The power light on the amp glows, just barely, but no sound.

We screw around another 10 minutes swapping every conceivable component: cables, power cords and wall sockets, instruments, speakers, channels, jacks -- but nothing. We finally give up and I go home to fetch my amp.

While I'm gone, Warren finally flags down a store employee who looks at the amp and says, "Oh, this is the Dead One" and fetches the Live One from the store room. Warren takes the time to write "Dead" on a napkin and leave it on the Dead One, in hopes that no other band gets to have this experience...

By the time I get back with my amp, Warren's got everything set up and we were playing pretty soon thereafter -- "only" 50 minutes late.

The upside was that, by that time, the café was calm and quiet, and I do love playing in a quiet place. I can hear myself, and there's less distraction, so I can really perform. And the results were terrific. The gig the night before makes a great dress rehearsal, I felt good, I could hear good... The resultant recording is pretty darn good.

I got a few decent takes the night before, too, so I've implemented a new feature on the K&W website -- "Song of the Week". It'll be a live take of a song that we captured recently, with a link on the top (Schedule) page, so (maybe) people will see it. This week's song is "Desperado", which I've recently added to my book, and which is working out pretty well.

Sally Ride Science Festival at UCI

On Sunday, I took Geneva to the Sally Ride Science Festival at UCI. It's a program she's started to encourage girls to go into science and engineering. There was a street fair with booths -- run by Actual Female Persons -- showing science stuff. Then we went into the gym and Sally gave a little speech and took questions. After that the kids got to choose two workshops to go to -- Geneva likes biology so she did "the bugs one", and one about fish.

Meanwhile, I was in a class about "Helping Your Daughter Get Into College". Pretty informative really, but how can it be that I have to start thinking about her college already?!? Ack!

Ice Skating with the Princesses

Acacia and I went ice skating on Wednesday night and had a great time. She's been doing a lot of roller and blade skating lately, so she's a pretty good skater these days.

There was a problem with the pizza, and in retrospect, I should have asked for a different pair of skates 'cuz my left one was way too sideways-slippable, but we had fun.

KC - RSM 04Nov2005

Another rough one. I used the store's amp again (so I could record, for what that's worth), and, again, couldn't get it to sound right. Oddly, halfway through the night, I inexplicably decided to turn the right-hand speaker 10 degrees further away from me (I originally had it pointed towards myself 'cuz I forgot to being my little monitor speaker), and it sounded pretty good, then. I guess the direct feed is just too harsh, but through a little speaker cabinet wood, not so bad.

Anyway, the bigger problem was that there were not one, but two groups of people who had come in to talk. And when I say, "talk", I mean "holler". Some kinds of joyful reunions of old friends, I guess, but they were really loud. Probably trying to hear themselves over that jerk with the guitar...

Clearly, they have a right to be there (probably more right than I do, given that they bought some coffee), so I can't really complain, but it made it pretty hard to play. More great training for the harsh realities of the performing life, I guess. First time ever that I even thought of just packing up and going home in the middle of a gig, though.

Todd and Tammy come by, but didn't stay long (probably 'cuz they couldn't hear anything anyway), and I had a few appreciative customers -- one a big Simon and Garfunkel fan. But most of the night was lost in the noise.

Still, I sold 4 CDs, and unaccountably made $20 in tips. It's strange that we used to get $4 or $7 when we thought it went pretty well, and these days we get $20 or $30 even when it goes not-so-good. A chunk of that increase is explained by the CD sales, I guess. And, sure, I know that I am (and we are) getting better all the time, but I can't believe the audiences can tell the difference, so much. I mean, we're not *so* much better than the "us" on the April 2004 CD...

My Halloween costume

OK, we're encouraged to wear costumes to work on Halloween, but there's not a lot of enthusiasm. I guess the Chinese people, understandably, just don't get it, so there's no response there...

Anyway, I usually wear my Space Camp astronaut jumpsuit, but this year I "accessorized" it with my cowboy boots and hat. "Space Cowboy", get it?

Unfortunately, almost nobody else did without a lot of prompting. Clueless...

Halloween Costumes 2005

As she was at school last week, Acacia went Trick-or-Treating as a gypsy. Trouble is, she hasn't really seen any "real" gypsies (not even Esmeralda in "Hunchback"), so she was kind of faking it. She pinned a bunch of little jingle bells all over her skirt, and that made it special. I told her that she should be wearing the scarf on her head, not tied around her hair, and she loved the idea, and that helped.

Geneva didn't have any ideas this year, and it's tough on an eighth grader, 'cuz they're so self-conscious. But I got down my old "Sergeant Pepper" jacket, and she went for it. A little red duct tape down the pants, and she was all set. She probably should have kept her hair down, but I guess she decided she looked like a girl, rather than a hipppie, that way. We wish we'd'a had a brass instrument of some kind for her to carry, but she made do with a borrowed pair of drumsticks.

Halloween Campout Pumpkin Display

	We had an Indian Princess campout this weekend, right in front of Halloween, so we had an inter-tribal pumpkin carving competition. It wasn't about individual pumpkins, it was the tribal theme that mattered.
	I came up with this "Angry Peasants Storming Frankenstein's Castle" idea (concept art above, reality here).
	Acacia and I did the dismayed-looking Frankenstein, and all the other kids just had to portray "angry" (with a little design help from me).
	I brought along some lamp oil and we made little torches ('cuz what's an angry mob without torches?). That really made it look cool at night when the judges came by. And we managed not to burn the forest down.

Acacia's Pumpkin 2005

Acacia got a "free" pumpkin at the Indian Princess trip to the pumpkin patch, almost two weeks ago, and since we're going camping tomorrow, last night was our last chance to carve it. I asked her what she was thinking of this year, and her idea was "Ballerina!" Hmmm. Kinda hard to do that one, any other ideas? "Unicorn!"

So I Googled up some unicorn silhouettes, and we knocked this one out. It came out pretty good, even though the pumpkin was really strange on the inside -- way stringier than I've ever seen.

Now I gotta do/supervise 14 more tomorrow at the campout, but that's another post.

Halloween Costume Parade!

Today was Acacia's school's annual Halloween Costume Parade. The whole school, Kindergarten through 5th, parades around the playground in their costumes, while the parents' cameras snap away. It's better than Halloween itself, 'cuz you get to see a couple hundred cute costumed kids, instead of the 15 or so we get at the front door every year.

The girls were mostly the same as usual: fairies, angels, princesses (Acacia and her best-friend Cezanne were gypsies (though, truth be told, she didn't look much different than every other day)). But the boys have a new possibility this year: Napoleon Dynamite, and there were several of those. Lots of Batman, too, with Spiderman largely dropping off the charts -- presumably because there wasn't a new movie this year. But the surprise winner, I think, was Darth Vader -- lots and lots of Darths. I guess the kids were more impressed with Episode III than us grown-ups were.

KC - RSM 22Oct2005

OK, well, that didn't go very well at all. Several reasons, I guess -- a completely unresponsive audience for one. Polite, possibly even authentic, clapping, but no real *listening* going on, most of the night. I tried to just ignore that and play anyway, but my concentration was further compromised by a group of 8 or 9 boys, seemingly unattended by any parents, running in and out of the store most of the night, hassling me, talking loudly right in front, etc. They were pretty awful, and it was a real challenge to remain civil. Good practice, though, I guess.

And, possibly the main reason: I had set up a notebook to record the whole thing. I used the store's amplifier, because it has line-level "Tape Out" jacks, which I ran to the notebook. Unfortunately, I set the levels too high, so most of the recording is clipped in the loud sections. Not much of a loss, though, since I didn't perform very well anyway. Whenever there's a recorder running, it's all I can think about, and I end up performing really badly, 'cuz I'm trying too hard not to make any mistakes. It's like *trying* to go to sleep -- the harder you try, the less likely it is to happen.

I guess (hope?) that the solution to that is the same as the solution to general stage-fright -- just do it, again and again, until the novelty wears off.

Anyway, it wasn't "bad", exactly, but it was certainly disappointing -- especially after how well it went two weeks ago at South Coast Plaza. I was hoping to get a little of that "on tape", but, no magic.

We have an Indian Princess campout next weekend, but I'll be back at RSM again in two weeks for another try. I hope it goes better -- I'm not sure my performer's ego can take that much bruising again.

Guitar Surgery

I spent a couple of hours yesterday re-engineering my guitar. My original intent was to build a new saddle piece, thicker than the current one, and moved "south" to lengthen the bass strings to fix the intonation. Of course, moving the saddle means cutting the bridge piece, which is irreversible, so that's a little scary.

But, I've also been annoyed lately by the lack of response in the lowest string. This is caused, probably, by the fact that I've got it set much higher than the other strings at the saddle end, so it doesn't rattle which means that its sound has more saddle material to get through to reach the pickup. So I cut it down some more, as much as I dared, and started thinking about the neck itself, which, upon inspection, was starting to curve upwards. The resultant high action is the theoretical source of the intonation problem, too, so I tweaked the tension rod in the neck to flatten it out.

That looked really good, but made most of the strings rattle like crazy, 'cuz I'd cut the nut to match the bent neck. So, I ended up buying and fitting a new nut and not working on the saddle/bridge at all. I think it helped, but didn't cure, the intonation problem, but it's also easier to play, I think, so that'll be nice on those long gigs. The intonation is only a little bit out now, so I think I'll live with it for a while, and see how it goes in real life.

Keith and Geneva video

I borrowed the Mini DV tape that my dad shot at the "Keith with Geneva" show at RSM on July 23rd, so I finally broke down and installed the Firewire card that I bought 6 months ago, and it worked, first try. Why does it surprise me when stuff works these days?

Anyway, I snagged the whole 54 minutes (11 gig), sent it back out again to a blank tape for me to keep, and also re-output it as WMV (which took 75 minutes of slogging). I also snagged a single song ("They Don't Know"), with Geneva singing, which clocks in at a manageable 8 meg, to show it can be done. Not sure what to do with it -- maybe I'll post it on the K&W songlist page with the MP3s.

The software ("Movie Maker 2", comes with XP) can also snag respectable still shots at 640x480 right off the movie. They look pretty good as-is, and processed down to blog size, they're quite usable. And I get to single-frame through the whole movie to find just the right shot -- still camera shots tend to catch the singer in an "F" or some other funny-mouth pose.