I headed over to Steel Stacks for a family concert as part of their Sat. morning series Peas and Q’s.  The place was crowded with families – ‘road race’ for kids was being held, along with PBS-TV festivities.

 

As I was setting up outside, the local rock station was playing the Stone’s You Can’t Always Get What You Want as I was tuning up, so I played along with it.  Several families were waiting for the show, and I noticed that Mick was belting out some sage advice for the parents, and, sure enough, I got the parents to sing along to their kids.  It was quite humorous.

 

A reasonable group stayed for the show, including some die-hard moms, kids and my friend John Christie, who brought his fancy camera.  He just put 64 of them up on FB….OMG.  Anyway, I premiered a couple of tunes for the new album, and mixed up sing-alongs, play-alongs, dance-alongs.  The kids felt free to come up on the low concrete stage, and it was a comfortable and enjoyable set.

 

One three year old girl kept coming up to me with the Transformer Sunglasses from my shaker bag, so I stopped what I was playing and put them on.  What was interesting – it became a running ‘gag’ – she continued to find them as I tossed them off after the first song, and kept on bringing them up to me to put on.  All quite silently and with a purpose.  (I never did find out why I needed them from her.) 

 

Afterwards, the mom (who had never seen me before) of the girl came up and commented that it was great to see the kids have the freedom to move and play and be on stage.  I just think that its a great theater technique from the old vaudeville days.  A beautiful morning playing outside…..

 

Veg Fest at 2 pm.  Gotta take a shower.