The Good, The Bad, NO Ugly

The good was that the rain stopped just in time for our July gig at Beto's Comida Latina. Yay! The bad was that when the rain went away, the heat came back. There was no ugly, of course; instead, there was music, and food, and dancing children and visits with friends old and new.

It was in the high 90s when we set up on Beto's patio. Steve had steeled himself for a first set with the sun in his eyes, and we were debuting FOUR news songs -- two of them four-parters -- an ambitious self-imposed task for certain. But, as it turned out the sun remained mostly behind clouds early on, and there was a good, strong breeze. And all four new tunes went off without any injuries.

Steve and I both had "our moments" -- something we now chuckle about and move on. Early in the first set, Steve began the guitar intro for "Everything I Own." He played it well, as usual. The problem is that the song we were singing was "Everything I Do." Later, when we played "Everything I Own" as a request, I suddenly forgot how to play two or three chords right in the middle of the song.

The four new songs went down well. The Eagles' "Heartache Tonight" featured Steve and Mary Lou sharing the leads, with Kathy and me putting in harmonies here and there. Steve has some nice guitar licks on this one. "Hotel California" is a song we've had requested from time to time, and we've taken our time getting it into the mix. Neither of us is Joe Walsh, so there's no guitar pyrotechnics with this version. Instead, we rely on the mix of voices to make the song work. There's a running bass line throughout the song that always fascinated me, and Steve uses that line to end the song using vocal harmony for four voices instead of three guitars.

We also debuted another Tim and Bob original, the last of our compositions to get a live audience before it goes onto our CD. The song is "Sweet Music Man," a tune Steve and I wrote for Mary Lou. There's still some rough edges there, but it sounded good, and we hope to get it recorded in a few days. The last song was CCR's "Who'll Stop the Rain." We now have two CCR songs in the repertoire -- both about rain.

Although there wasn't a soul on the patio when we got there, plenty of folks showed up to enjoy the evening. The crowd was very generous with their attention and appreciation. Veteran Tim and Bob Nationals Hillary, Marcelo, Bethany, Matt, and John-Michael were there, and we made many new friends as well including Caroline, George, Elizabeth, Serena, Buck and Paul. Our favorite new friend of the night was the youngster Curtis, who made several trips to the bandstand to make requests. We were actually able to deliver on two of those requests. Curtis is almost five years old, and very charming. We're already talking about incorporating two of his requests-in-vain to our repertoire.

By the time the gig was over, we were happy and tired. We've got 12 hours of recording to do between Saturday morning and Monday night. It wears us down a bit, but hey, it's music! Life is good!

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