Genius In The Audience

Wow, what a month October was. I played nine shows in ten days in Northern California, including a big theater show in my hometown of Los Altos. All in all, I played for thousands of people. The audiences were incredible — totally willing to create interactive music, totally game to sing and count and dance and have fun, occasionally mobbing the stage to the point where we had to stop the music, clear the stage, and then pick things up again. There’s a lesson there — we need a stage bouncer at the theater shows. We didn’t have one in Los Altos. Crazy man, crazy. I haven’t seen a mosh pit like that since a Fishbone concert I attended in the late ’80’s.

It was wonderfantastic playing shows day after day and experiencing different ideas brought forth by the audience. At one elementary school assembly, while I played “Don’t Monkey With My Heart” the whole audience of 300 kids started doing the wave — in time to the music. It was incredible — they would start on beat one at the left of the audience, and move all the way over until beat one of the next measure, when they’d yell “whoo!” Then, at beat one of the third measure, they would start the wave all over again on the left side. Unbelieveable skill, and I didn’t even ask them to do it. The idea never crossed my mind. But when you give kids the freedom to use their creativity and invite them to participate in some musical interactivity, they can come up with amazing and imaginative things.

Now I’m back home in Colorado and we have just wrapped production on the book! Christian’s illustrations are nothing short of stunning. I’ll write more about that soon. Until then, dig your own groove, baby, dig your own groove.