the spare

Last week we headed to San Diego to play at the Hot Monkey Love Café. This cute little place is owned and operated by a sweet couple named Alma and Rick. They were wonderful hosts! The opening performance was by The Hot Monkey Love Band – Rick (the owner), Jerome, and Chris – all really nice guys having a good time jammin’ on a Friday night. Chris, the bass player, offered to sit in on our set (since we have only guitar and drums). I was more than happy to have him do so since I saw him play before us -- this guy is an amazing bassist. We had 15 minutes to prep – he and I went over the songs outside the café and he took notes on our 8 song set. Then we got up there and went to town – Chris glided through all the songs perfectly. I’d never played with someone who was able to learn a whole set of songs on the fly then perform then in 15 minutes. I was blown away…and so was the audience. It turned out to be a great and very successful experiment in improvisation and I hope to visit the HMLC again for another live, unrehearsed, on the fly performance!

I played a show at Fiddler’s Dream a couple weeks ago with Jennifer Yeung and Micah Bentley. It was a great show – Jennifer & Micah were fantastic. Fiddler’s is a strictly acoustic venue which means no electrical amplification for either instrument or vocals. This makes for a nice, intimate performance…very comfy indeed! So when it came my turn to play, I got up to the stage and started my set. I was a little nervous about projection but after a couple songs I started to relax and even talked about the songs more than I’ve ever done before. About 2 songs before the end of my set, the power went out. The lights went dark and a lone flood light attached to a side wall kicked on. Needless to say, this didn’t stop me from finishing the song…I didn’t have to worry about the sound system! After joking a little about how cool it was that the lack of electricity had no effect on my set, I went on to sing my next 2 songs in an even MORE intimate setting. The audience was fantastic and I had a great time chatting with friends after the show. I’m gonna hafta work on getting another show there – this time with all the lights out – hmmmm…good Halloween gig!