Keegan Ales

I can never get over how much fun I have when I play a Thursday night at Keegan Ales in Kingston. The crowd is great, the food is great, the beer is great, and the people who run the place are great. I have been playing there for years, as have my friends the BIG Shoe, so we know the proprietors fairly well. If you've never been, you have to go, and Thursdays are different from any other night in terms of craziness. Let give you some highlights from last night:

-I always like to take requests from the crowd whenever I play, and it's always great when I can pull out a choice request that really makes someone's night. Last night there were two: "Smoke," by Ben Folds Five, and then "Kodachrome," by Paul Simon (which I had never played before).
-During the 2nd set, my g-string broke....on my guitar. So, I had to switch things around and play the rest of the set on the keyboard. I broke out "Time After Time," by Cyndi Lauper, and I got through about 98% of the song without major incident when I looked up and noticed that a guy was holding a cell phone up to me. I immediately got confused and abruptly stopped playing in the middle of the last piano riff. He smiled, closed his phone, and walked away. I guess someone he knows must love that song, so when I started playing it he pulled out his phone and made a call so the person could listen. Didn't I feel like rock star?
-I got an amazing Cuban sandwich.
-Toward the end of the 3rd set, I played "Fuck You," by Cee Lo Green, and I prefaced it by saying if the crowd didn't sing along I may never be booked at Keegan again. They were game, and every time we got to the "fuck you" lyric the crowd did the work. There's something magical in being able to get a crowd of people to scream "fuck you" over, and over, and over again.
-Having the crowd ask for two more songs after I finished. Enough said.

I can't wait to get back there.