Crystal Gardens City (04.10.14)

I was in a pretty good mood when I got out of bed today. After all, last night's show at Crystal Gardens City was the kickoff of my "April Showers" mini-tour of SL over the next week or so, and the show went exceptionally well. We had a nice sized crowd, and I think the performance went just fine.

That good mood vanished about a half hour later, at 6:30, when I was dressed and seated at my computer. That's when I started hearing a noise that was similar to a meat grinder, or perhaps a leaf blower. I thought it was coming from outside, and peeked through the window to see what could be making such a racket at that early hour. That's when I realized that horrifyingly, the sound was coming from my MacBook Pro. A little troubleshooting made me aware that the hard drive is about to go to computer heaven.

Look: it's a five-year-old computer, and computers do die. This computer has been the centerpiece of both my business and my music, and has served me well the whole time. I have no complaints, and no regrets about it. Also, there's the fact that my processor, an Intel Core 2 Duo, is getting long in the tooth, and I'd already been talking about getting a new computer this year in any case. So, this basically just pushes forward something that I'd been planning on doing anyway. And, in more good news, I back up everything on a regular basis, so the really important stuff -- my business files, my software, and my in-progress music -- will be available regardless of what happens.

And, really looking on the bright side, a new computer is a business expense and will be treated as such on my taxes. And I'll have a new processor that will run all the latest and greatest stuff better than my current machine. So, I'm just going to suck up my state of depression over the imminent demise of my laptop (it's still working right now, by the way... I'm writing this post on it) and instead of dwelling on that, talk about my show.

Nice crowd for a Thursday night at 5PM. Photo and top photo by Kat.

Kat stands in front near a dancing couple. Photo by Kat.

Triana Caldera sings along with me from the crowd. Photo by Kat.

Crystal Gardens City is simply a fun place both to perform and to see live music. Photo by Kat.

As I've mentioned, I perform in between Mark Allan Jensen and FrankLee Anatra every other Thursday night at Crystal Gardens City, and it's always a good show. Our styles work well together, and therefore we seem to be able to retain a good deal of each other's audiences. The crowd was fun and enthusiastic, and a good number of my Zakster fans/friends came out to see me, which makes me happy every time.

Crystal Gardens City set list...
Northern Sky (Nick Drake)
Broken Day (Zak Claxton)
Go Easy on Me (Zak Claxton)
Better Reasons (They Stole My Crayon)
I Am A Child (Neil Young)
Always Tomorrow (Zak Claxton)
Summer Breeze (Seals & Crofts)
Falling Down (Zak Claxton)
Landslide (Fleetwood Mac)
Perfect Girl (Zak Claxton)
Ziggy Stardust (David Bowie)
*Hey Bulldog (Beatles)
Tea for the Tillerman (Cat Stevens)

*I'd never performed "Hey Bulldog" at a solo show before this one.

Big thanks to everyone who came out to the show, and to everyone who listens to me occasionally whine on this blog, and special thanks to those who helped support last night's show!
Tzeitel, Hedonist Afarensis, Kite Bravin, Winter Thorn, Richy Nervous, Bono Fouroux, Cicadetta Stillwater, Kat Claxton, Rina Miles, Aurelie Chenaux, Sesh Kamachi, Rusty Seisenbacher, my lovely manager Maali Beck, and the City owners Sandi and Mikal Beaumont!