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A Musical Day in Laguna Beach, CA

Tuesday, 22 July 2008
 

Wow, our life is exciting :) We are becoming real, full-time music pros yet!

First of all it has to be said that we are still in the wonderful USA - on our one month's holidays and music vacation in California. But the last weeks we hadn't had much time to loaf. Several gigs, guitar lessons, filming, etc. filled our schedule. But now we want to tell you about the craziest day of this week.

It was Tuesday morning. At breakfast we went through our today's plan once again. In the evening we would play in a tavern called "Hennessey's" in Laguna Beach. But afore we wanted to dabble at busking.

From Woodland Hills (green) to Laguna Beach (red).

When we played at Hennessey's last week, jOHn (who had organized us these gigs) told us that he had listend to musicians on Laguna Beach for several times yet. Colorably we were allowed to play there without a licence as long as we didn't annoy people with loud amps and low or aggressive words ... Good news for us! ;)

For this purpose jOHn had borrowed us his acoustic guitar as we had only one acoustic guitar with us. Our second, a half-acoustic, wouldn't have been hearable unplugged. Equipped like that we drove southbound straight away - Laguna Beach was about two hours far from our domicile (see map).
 

Summer, sun, beach

Here in America it's a bit different in comparison to Austria. If someone is playing on the streets home in Vienna then it's very often a sign of poverty or beggary. But here in California you can find all normal, average people just seating themselves in the sun and making music.

So we walked along the beach to find a good place. Characteristic for here: We weren't sitting on our bench for longer than 5 minutes when a young woman came to offer us concert tickets for her show -  she tried to sell a few tickets on the beach (If you're interested: janefullermusic.com). We got into conversation with her and she was thrilled with the fact that we were going to play here. She nearly couldn't believe that Mona and Lisa were our real names. We swapped business cards and she wished us well for the future. Then she had to attend to her own business again. Oh well, you have lot of options in LA but also much competition, and you have to work hard for your success. ;)

Afternoon Sun: Our place at the beach promenade.

As you can see on the pics our bench was right next to the promenade. The wonderful sandy beach with real baywatch-towers was just in front of us. Good-looking lifeguards watched the waves while hundreds of seagulls circled around them.

Of course we were a bit nervous when we built up the guitar case in front of us, put in a few CDs and business cards and tuned our guitars. For us it was something totally new and we had no clue how the passers-by would react on it.

Cliché: In California the lifeguards are not only zealous for saftey but also for their look ;)

We started with "I will" ... a few people glanced at us or stopped for a short while. Then we continued with our whole repertoire. We presented everything we were able to play. Primarily the quicker and happier songs were crowd-pleasers ... Hardly surprising, after all we were at the beach ;)

The tension passed by very quickly and it was so much fun to play for the people. They thanked us with singing or clapping along, throwing money in our guitar case, taking business cards and pics or chatting with us. We got into conversation with so many different people. Once a man addressed us. He liked it a lot that we played "old" songs like "Tambourine Man", "Proud Mary" or "Teach your children well". "The songs he grew up with" like he called them. The Americans are generally much into really good pop classics ... that's good!

We conversed with people from the different US states like Texas or Georgia - about our music, the band, the CD, our gigs and about Austria. It's really funny that most of the Americans whom we were talking with had been to Austria yet - either in Vienna ("what a wonderful city"), in Salzburg for skiing or in Tyrol for hiking. Of course we also promoted our evening performance at "Hennessey's" - and some people really wanted to come by later!

Except for our short conversations with listeners we had played for about 2 ½ hours without a break. Our fingers started to hurt already. Finally two beach guard clerks in their blue-white uniforms came along. "Well, seems that you're making a lot of money here", they said almost appreciatively. Then they told us very friendly that they don't mind us playing but that we were not allowed to sell something. We had put the CDs there and our guitar case was open, and that was a kind of "selling". They said we should simply close the case and play on. OK. Sorry, didn't know that!

But it was getting late anyway and people started packing their beachstuff. Besides we were quite hungry and thirsty yet and our fingers had to be fit for evening use. So we left it at that.

The setting: Summer, sun, sea and beach. What more do you want?

This beach-thing was absolutely awesome! It was exciting meeting so many new people. There were most different kinds of people: Those, who sat down on the bench next to us and listened for quite a while before they came and spoke to us or gave us a few dollars. Then there were those who participated immediately by singing along at the top of their loungs or played along with their harmonica. Of course that was beneficial to business, since everytime a few people stopped, others got curious too. And in front of the others nobody wanted to walk away without putting at least one dollar into the case ;)

Sometimes it happened that the promenade was "jammed" for a short time because extended families were listening. Then most of the time their little kids wanted to put the money in our case. Also same-aged teens came around. E.g. a boy with a Beatles T-Shirt sneaked around us - very "inconspicuously". Coincidentially we were playing two Beatles songs at this time which seems to had him motivated to give us a dollar. But he was very shy. We were mostly bluffled by an obviously homeless man who gave us a dollar from his little money. Well, that's like it works here: "Live and let live".

All in all we earned about 30 bugs! No bad pocket money for 2 ½ hours "pursuing-your-hobby", what?
 

The Evening Show at Hennessey's

It's easier to read the whole prologue of how we got the Hennessey's gigs in our 1st Hennessey's entry. Today was our secound gig and we already knew the "domestic use". Waiter Jason immediately delivered our cokes with extra lime, and before jOHn set up the technical equipment, each of us scoffed a big burger ...

This time there were more people in the restaurant than last week which made us glad of course. That meant more audience J but also more background noise. And once again we were sitting on our chairs, the guitars in our hands. Exactly like last week. But it was different though, because of all the beach-playing before we were much in high spirits and not a bit nervous.

This evening we sang with stand mikes (Thanks to Mike and jOHn for borrowing!) instead of headsets because you can control the volume of the voice much better with a stand microphone.

We relaxedly played our whole repertoire and even added an encore at the end ... Anyhow the audience was fantastic this evening for what also Arthur from Las Vegas contributed very much.

Arty plugs us a lot.

Arty, like he calls himself, has a Spanish background. He also makes music (Las Vegas String Band) and he engaged in ours as well, like you can hear on the "Michelle" video. This evening he was our biggest fan, or at least the loudest one ;) He cheered us on, sang along loudly and created good humor. Sometimes it was so funny that we had to laugh while singing. It was hard to keep the risible muscles under control :) jOHn said that it surely was a good training for us, and it really was. But Arthur was serious with us - he stayed in contact and meanwhile he even promotes us on his website. Thanks, Arty!

People applauded abundantly after each single song. Of course that really speeded us up. The audience was very attentive and interested, just great! Maybe we made a few more little mistakes but our presence was much stonger and we were surer on the stage ... Thus we could fascinate the audience more than last time.
 

But we really have tell you two other stories:

1. While we were playing the last song a woman addressed Michaela and asked her how long we would continue to sing. Her sister had listened to us on the beach and thereupon had sent her to Hennessey's. As we had already reached the end of our show she decided to buy two of our Live-CDs, one for herself and one for her sister. Isn't that great? Imagine we wouldn't have played on the beach!

2. Later, jOHn told us the following: A Hennessey's guest had heard us two playing on the beach too and also saw the police reminding us to close the guitar case. Subsequently the man went to the clerks and asked them why they don't let us play on our great music. He also came to Hennessey's because of our music. When we heard that story we were really surprised what had happened around us without us realizing it.
 

jOHn (left) and Mike (right) while playing - The goodbye was hard!

After we had finished Mike and jOHn had their turn again. They are already big pros who have something on the ball.

Finally it was time to say farewell - to Jason, jOHn and Mike. It was hard because in this short time all of them really deared to our hearts very much. The only comfort was that Mike and jOHn mentioned to maybe visit us in Austria next summer. Let's see. But of course that would be terrific!

Yeah, that's what our future working life shoud look like ;) Making music the whole day long and getting money for it ... What could be better? After the long return journey we collapsed into bed, exhausted but happy. Anyway, the day was unforgettable and we had already decided to play on the beach again ;)

Thanks to all who had cheered us up so greatly J

Your's Mona and Lisa

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