Then back to AS220, where Keith Munslow told me that I'd be doing two songs, the second with Hannah Devine taped to a pole stage left. All right then. I asked Keith if I could play his piano on the second song, and he said sure.
Then I went downstairs to the ready room, where I partook of this delightful assortment of Snickers, M&Ms, roasted peanuts, pretzels, and Twizzlers:
While the bowl was being filled, someone said, "Won't the M&Ms melt and get over everything?", so I reminded them of the M&Ms slogan.
Next, it was showtime. I was the first act:
so I decided to do Photo Album, my song of childhood and Satanism. I was more nervous than I expected, but I think this added a little extra punch to my singing; anyway, it seemed to go over pretty well.
I wasn't going to be on again until towards the end of the show:
so I decided to go through the other room of AS220 (where the bar is) and maybe go into the entrance to catch a few of the other acts. However, while doing this, I ran into
christychristy, who had hoped to catch my performance (d'oh!). So instead I wandered around the outside parts of FOO Fest with her for a little while, getting a cheeseburger at the Crazy Burger stand, examining the anarchist book fair, etc. Then we returned to Empire Revue in time to hear Hannah sing a song, Sarah Reiter describe going to see Motorhead, and Sonny Roelle do solo versions of a few of his band The Sentimental Favorites's songs.For my second song I did Hybrid Car. It was a little strange sonicly; Keith doesn't have a monitor set up for himself, and while the vocals go through the sound system the keyboard just goes through an amp which is right behind him, so I couldn't hear myself sing very well and the piano was really loud. The rest of the Superchief Trio joined in after the first verse, but honestly I'm not sure how it sounded. But, again, it seemed to go over pretty well, and Keith complimented me on the song afterwards, so that was nice!
After that I decided I wanted to get away from the Foo Fest crowds for a bit, so I went home and took a nap. Then, when I got up, I conceived of a plan: take all my accumulated change to a Coinstar station (it turned out that I had accumulated about $130 in quarters, dimes, nickles, and pennies), then go down to Thayer Street with my guitar and do some busking -- the first time I've done this since I got my permit to do so about a year ago.
I think I had probably played for about 20 minutes before anyone dropped anything in the guitar case (a dollar bill), but things picked up a bit after that. Probably the cutest thing was when a little boy, maybe 10 years old, dropped a quarter in, then ran away, then returned with (I assume) his younger sister a couple of minutes later, at which point he dropped in another quarter and she dropped in a penny. Anyway, after playing for about an hour (and getting about $5.51) I was thinking of wrapping things up when I got a phone call from my sister -- she and her family were returning from spending a couple of days at the beach and were going to be passing through Providence in about twenty minutes, and did I want to get together for dinner? I said sure, so I busked some more until they got there (accumulating a total of $10.51 -- although I think the wind might have blown a dollar away -- but anyway). I then packed up and we went to Antonio's Pizza for dinner, then Ben & Jerry's for dessert. They seem to be doing well; they took Ezra to see his first movie in the theater recently and he did pretty well. (They saw Ratatouille.)
After that, they headed back to Worcester and I went to Nick-a-Nees, where I caught about an hour of Paul Geremia's first set before heading home and going to bed.