I got an email from Arts Quest this week for a last minute fill-in for a Saturday family show, so I snapped it up. I called on my friend John Christie to sit in on guitar and he brought his electric and acoustic to the gig. Nice to have a touch of ‘nasty’ from his electric on some of my songs. Things filled up nicely and we had a fairly lively crowd. John’s sons came down and it was nice to refer to some good times we had when they were children.
John’s son David used to tear up and cry when I did ‘Daddy, Take a Nap’, thinking that John would be taking a nap and leaving him alone. I learned not to do that song in my set if he were there. I reminded him today, threatening that if he didn’t do Peanut Butter and Jelly I would do that song.
All in all, it was a good set, and one mom said that I was really on today. Funny, I don’t think like that. Perhaps I’m just doing better than when she saw me last. She brought up her son Jackson to get a CD and asked for a few bars of Cat Came Back, which I did. Jackson seemed a little distant. I signed two CD’s for him and he smiled. The mom came back a few moments later and said that Jackson is a ‘late’ speaker, with some learning differences. She then said that the first time he talked was at one of my gigs. Phew. This is powerful stuff.