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Home >
MonaLisa News
> Hennessey's in Laguna Beach, California
Hennessey's at Laguna Beach, CA
Tuesday,
15 July 2008
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From Woodland Hills (green arrow) to Laguna Beach (red). |
California Dreaming ... Thank god it's reality for us at the moment! The first half of our holidays is over already. It was filled with a gig we played at a private 4th July Independence Day Party together with our friends, as well as with a one-week trip to San Francisco, Yosemite and Sequoia National Parks.
Yesterday was the start for the following two weeks which we will mainly spend with playing gigs and shooting video footage. Where could be a better place for that purpose than at the little artist townlet Laguna Beach, approx. a two hours drive south-east of Los Angeles? It's full of galleries, museums, artist cafés, shops and of course thousands of beach visitors.
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Laguna Beach, CA: Ocean Avenue directly leads to the beach ... |
Hennessey's Tavern - in which we had our first gig yesterday - is located on Ocean Avenue that directly leads to the beach.
Do you remember jOHn, our last year's guitar teacher? When he heard that we would visit California again, he summarily checked us two gigs.
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The Hennessey's is a very popular pub, located in the
center of the city. |
He and his friend Mike Vitale have a permanent engagement at the Hennessey's. Every Tuesday and Sunday from 8 to 12 pm they play covers (e.g. Eric Clapton, Sting) and their own songs. jOHn invited us quasi to be their opening act and to present ourselves to the audience.
So we had about three weeks to rearrange some of our live- concert songs for two guitars and two voices. Mona had to learn a lot of new stuff on the guitar because she mainly had played the drums till now. At the end we had got a repertoire with about 10 songs finished for our show.
We arrived at Hennessey's at 7 pm and jOHn helped us to set up the loudspeakers, amps, mikes, ... The show should start about 8 pm. In the meantime we learnd a lot of nonsense from him: How can one bow a paperclip to catapult it in the air? How can one throw a guitar pick that it flies straightly but still twists around its own axis? How can one make palps out of old guitar strings? ... jOHn is a pro in that. Well, these are all things you have to know as a good musician ;)
It was 8 pm and we had to start. It was new for us that it passed off completely different than our concert. Upstairs (were we were playing) weren't many people yet, and these few guests were busy with eating and chatting. As musicians we were in the background which was a new situation. We knew that most guests hadn't come because of the music and that we would need to be good in order to get their attention.
VIDEOS
OF OUR 2nd GIG AT HENNESSEY'S!
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This time we brought our own guitars to the US. Renting a guitar would have cost more than the guitar flight cases. |
Full of resolution we played the first chords of "I will" to get rid of our tension and to show the audience what we have down pat. "Proud Mary" and "Samba Pa Ti" followed. As we could see by the audience's reaction they were kind of surprised. While some of them still applied themselves to their drinks, the Baseball-broadcast or flirting, others applaused approvingly and became listeners.
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Mona played on her brown half-acoustic guitar "Jack" and Lisa chose "Musterkind" (= "goody goody"), the Yamaha acoustic guitar with built-in mike. Both did a good job. |
Some people even came upstairs just to listen to our music. Of course we were a little nervous but it just boosted this great feeling to play for an audience in this new way.
Finally we had presented all our songs. We met with good and proper applause
and the pack of businesscards shrank noticeably. jOHn and Mike were also
enthusiastic.
So far jOHn only knew us from the CD, our website and the
videos. To his surprise he then realized that this was the first
time he had heard us playing live.
VIDEOS
OF OUR 2nd GIG AT HENNESSEY'S!
While jOHn and Mike were setting up their stuff and we were stowing away ours we already knew what
we would improve next week. As we were used to play
for attentive audiences so far, this time we had to sing against a pretty
loud general sound level just given by the local mode. In this case the headset-mikes handicapped us a bit because we
couldn't control the volume of the voices by changing the distance from
mike to mouth. Unanimously we decided to use stand microphones and to
better take care about the guitar volume the next time. Regrettably for a
musician it's not done to play well, he also has to be well versed with
the technics. Each organizer has different equipment, and there's a lot to
learn about. But thank God we have our Dad who teaches us more and
more about it.
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That's Jason who was always friendly and on the scene ... primarily for the extra lime in the coke! |
Jason, the most lively waiter we've ever met ;), always refilled our cokes, with extra much lime, of course . We've found a new fan in him. He was very keen on us, and so he splashed out the one or other drink. Actually an indirect way of getting payed ... Anyhow, such waiters we would always like to have!
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We could listen to them for hours: jOHn (left) and Mike (right) ... |
While we scoffed our burgers we attentively listened to jOHn and Mike and closely watched their fingers. Worth admiring what else one could get out of a guitar ... Both are very, very good guitarist, singers and songwriters. They sang sad, happy, funny and even scary songs, of these we at least understood the choruses ;)
From our revenues of tips and sold CDs we instantly bought one of Mike's autographed CDs and arranged another guitar lesson with jOHn as the ones of last year had helped us a lot! But also jOHn had improved a lot on the guitar and vocals, that's why we still have so much to catch up.
At midnight we finally started our way home to the north. But unlike on other long midnight hour car drives we haven't slept a second. We were wide-awake, completely twirly - we jabbered, analyzed, sang Mike's and jOHn's songs and made future plans. jOHn namely told us that he somtimes heard some musicians playing at the Laguna beach. He gave us the idea to try that too. Next week, when we are going to play at Hennessey's again, we are going to sit down at the beach before and will play with open guitar cases ... Let's see what will happen ;) Yes, of course we'll give a report about it too.
This day definitely belongs to our collection of "The heretofore greatest days in our life" and we can't wait to play our next gig :)
Bye, guys!
Mona & Lisa
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