I always enjoy these two hour sessions at Shankara because I get to play my songs in a nice acoustic atmosphere with no pressure. I get to stretch and concentrate on playing strong and correctly. I don’t always get it right but it’s still a good opportunity to try to get it right. I’m a tough crowd.
I did my scrapple song, Jelly in the Dish, and mentioned that there should be vegan scrapple. Wendi, the chef, said that there was, and it’s call vrapple. So I did the song using vrapple and it turned out to be a lot of fun to sing vrapple over and over again. I’m sure I’ll use it again in other situations.
Today’s learning experience involve a young couple and their young son. I naturally launched into a bunch of my kids’ songs, but he never came out of his hooded jacket and made any eye contact. I mentioned that this was a tough audience for sure.
The parents said that he was unusually in a Sunday funk this morning and tried to encourage him. They even said that they had the Playground CD and that he was familiar with some of the tunes.
I have had experiences with some kids who are brought up on the CD’s but have a hard time adjusting to the live performance of these comfortable tunes. I can imagine it would be hard to reconcile the comfort of the songs in a familiar context of home or car, and then experience those songs in a live. performance situation. It is quite a bit more intimidating, with eye contact, etc. I totally understand the enormity of the experience. So, I went on. (I did give him a Peanut Butter CD).
As I finished up, I came off the stage and asked him to give me five. Nothing. So I got a five from Dad and one from Mom. Still nothing from him. So I said, “Okay” and started to walk away. Just then Mom said, “Oh, how about a fist bump?” And, sure enough, peeking out from under the jacket was a tiny fist. So, I gave him a fist bump to seal the deal.
It made my day.
$6 tips which I split with Esther the server, gave away a CD, got some great food to go that will be several meals early this week. And made contact.