2008 Spring/Summer Tour - Day 22

We drove into L.A., where I had two shows at The Grove, which is a really nice outdoor park within a very nice shopping plaza. The first show was very crowded and went really well, but Jessica, my contact there, warned me that the crowds for the second shows are usually a lot smaller and less enthusiastic, and that was definitely the case. It wasn't my best performance, either, by any means, and I had a little trouble keeping the energy up among a more sporadic crowd. There was also an unfortunate timing choice... There is a fountain right behind the stage area, and every half hour there is a streaming fountain show accompanied by music, which is pretty loud. Performers start their sets right after the fountain show at the top of the hour, but you're kind of left to deal with it at the 30 minute point. In my first show, I was doing a loud enough and very active song, and though the music from the fountain show could be heard a little bit underneath that, it was barely noticeable and not really a factor. But in the second show, I decided to do Joe Scruggs' "The Bicycle Song" at a certain point, not realizing that the fountain show was just about to start. That song involves three volunteers playing along with me on bicycle horns, and it is just me and a guitar, with a lot of starts and stops between the different parts. I just barely started the first chord of the song when suddenly a Donna Summer disco song starts blasting behind me for the fountain show. There was really nothing I could do but get through the song like that, as distracting as it was... Any other song and I might have just scrapped it and started something else, but I had already chosen the volunteers and done the whole set up for the song.

Another... um... amusing thing about that song was that someone's little lhasa apso dog was barking along with me during the whole song. It was distracting at first to hear the yapping, but then I realized that the dog was barking almost perfectly with the beat the whole time. What a great musical gift! Unfortunately, the dog was not available to join me on my tour, and that's probably just as well for Tiggy's sake. He's not really an animal person, he's more of a people person.

So the second show wasn't ideal, but there was some fun moments, like when a guy who was probably about 70 years old was one of the winners of the "Ants in Your Pants" dance contest. He was really boogying down! Roseann described his dancing as "Bill Cosby meets Fred Astaire". It was also really great that David Tobocman and his family came out for the show. I covered David recently on my blog and his debut kids' album is a favorite of ours. He and his wife, KC, seem to have a similar dynamic as Roseann and I in terms of how they work together, and we all chatted for a while after the show, though I regret that we couldn't talk longer. Becca sang some of his "Home" song for him, and then he obliged her by singing the rest, and she recognized his voice.

We drove around for a while in L.A., then went out to stay at an RV park in Lancaster, which is near Palmdale where I have assemblies tomorrow morning.

Sorry that it took so long to get this post and the last one up. We're doing pretty well as far as writing these journal entries every night or at the earliest possible time the next day, but sometimes we're without wifi or have to hurry in the morning to get somewhere and can't post right away. In any case, we'll catch up with everything before too long if we're ever behind...

Demonstrating my levitation ability at The Grove...


With David Tobocman...