Fully Clothed

Yesterday was fun. In the morning I sat on the floor surrounded by music and put together most of the charts for next week's gig at the Octavia Lounge in San Francisco. This morning I couldn't sleep so after I write this I need to go transpose one more chart. Really, the chart situation is improving but still urgent. I have a hell of a week ahead of me but when things calm down I've got to revamp the whole organization method/filing here at the home office.

We took the dogs for a walk and then I did my makeup and met Wayne Wallace and Michael Zilber over at Yoshi's, where David Belove took some promotional shots of us for our gig in December at Yoshi's. I haven't wanted to jinx it but Wayne says yes, it is happening so I'm going to go ahead and get it on my calendar ASAP. We had a lot of fun taking pictures--hope they turn out OK. Another singer, Rennea, was there, and she helped out by mugging and doing funny walks behind David's back to keep us laughing.

Then it was over to La Peña at 5:30 to set up for the short benefit performance I had last night with the Funkanauts. It took quite a while to get set up, so I shortened our set by a few songs since I figured it was going to take at least another 45 minutes between sets to get the Funkanauts set up. It went quite well, and my husband came with my 5-year-old. Sebastian played quietly with his cars while we went 45 minutes past our intended start time, and Emilio told me that when the music started Sebastian sat politely, then turned to him and said, "Just two songs and then we leave, OK Daddy?" About midway through the show I heard him begging "Let's go!" and soon after I noticed they were gone. But I am so proud of him--I think these experiences are so important in terms of both exposure to music and ability to sit through a concert.

I sold 8 CDs, which is quite good. Of course, I personally made no money since I'd donated my services to the cause, but I got lots of mailing list names. The Funkanauts, who turned out not to have brought the naked girls pictured on their website (their manager said that's for the cover of their album), were definitely funky, Bay Area-style. A mix of Jimmy Hendrix, some classic funk, metal and rap. They probably wouldn't agree about the metal, but there was definitely some more crossover sounding style about them. I sat down to listen to the first song, and they were tearing it up but no one was dancing, so I had to step in and rectify that situation. I got some folks up to dance with me and ended up staying for the whole set. At the end, they were gracious and thanked me from the stage, saying "It's so great to meet famous people [sic] like Alexa Morales and Dave Mathews. And you know what's funny, those cats were reading music the whole time up there on stage!"