At first, I was a little ambivalent about my return to this Vegan restaurant, after several months off over the summer and a late and long gig at the Sands. As I settled in in the window box (which provides great acoustics), there was no one in the down stairs section, though I heard lots of chatter in the balcony room. After a while, I gave thought to the possibility of Wendi installing a ‘crowd noise’ CD loop to give the impression that there were people in the restaurant.
There actually was a vegetarian group meeting/eating going on and they were having a good time. I had the downstairs to myself, the two waitress’s and Wendi, the vegan chef. I am pretty much used to these situations, so I launched into tunes I had neglected last night and proceeded to play real hard. Seems I was warmed up from the get go and the night before.
It’s rare I get to play the song and go back and repeat sections that need work, so it turned out to be a great session. I concentrated on more refined strumming, corrected some sloppy picking and fingering, worked on lyrics and newer songs I don’t get to play often. So I actually got some valuable practice in, while keeping the pieces at performance level. Time well spent.
An hour and a half in, some folks came in and sat in the lower section, so I shifted into a more mellow presentations, so I was glad I had a chance to wail early on. There is a deference to folk eating and conversing, so I backed it down, played my instrumentals on guitar and mandolin. I finished at 1 pm, packed up my stuff, picked up my pay (a vegan meal to go) and headed out into the glorious warm Sunday afternoon.
I’m headed to Touchstone for a matinee with a Hungarian troupe. A good day of music, theater and the arts. Okay any day, I suppose.