That was a fun little gig I had last night. My bass-playing friend Steve works at a Starbucks and they were having something of a Christmas party - open to the public, and with coloring books. So Steve asked if I'd be willing to play piano if he played bass, and I said sure - fine with me that it was for no pay since I didn't have any time to prepare for a real gig. It was a bit haphazard, we knew that one gal had designs on singing a couple of Christmas tunes, but no one could supply any music, either.
So, Steve ended up buying a fakebook of Christmas tunes and brought it along. I brought my M-Audio keyboard (the $200 one), my amp, and a microphone. I didn't really have any idea of what to expect. It turned out there were about 15-20 people there (it's a small Starbucks on Barnes and Miller in SW), and when it was time for us to start, everyone kind of turned and looked at us. Not quite background music!
So, we started with Frosty The Snowman, and all the cute barista girls started singing along, and it basically went from there.
Pretty fun overall. I'm glad I wasn't paid, honestly, because there was no preparation, and lead sheets for Christmas tunes aren't exactly the most creative. But I got thrown to the wolves a bit, always a good thing, the attention was very much focused on me and Steve, I did some singing and some crowd interaction stuff which I hadn't really planned on at all, and it turned out that it felt quite comfortable.
