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!