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...