I had another busy and incredibly fun weekend. On Saturday, I went to Otis! to see Gotoh Izumi play a short opening set for the headlining band, Tembera Stars. Izumi normally plays accordian and sings for Nekomushi, the widely popular band that she leads. Saturday night, she played a wonderful solo set of original music on accordian with vocals/storytelling.

Sunday was our second gig at Molly Malone’s. Although our first performance there last month was fun and went quite well (from our perspective), the crowd size and response were a bit lower than we had hoped. So, we were a bit anxious about how things would shape up on Sunday night. As it turns out, we had nothing to worry about; the place was packed, the crowd was very attentive, and they seemed to enjoy what we were doing.

After the end of the first set, a man approached me, introduced himself as Paul, and began asking about the Stick and mentioning how much he liked the sound. Paul was playing solo guitar and saxophone at a beer garden across the street, and had stopped into Molly’s for a pint during his break. It turns out that his last set would be ending at just about the time we would be starting our third set, so we invited him to bring his soprano sax over and join us. The result was just incredible. Jamie, Kit, and I loved the extra dimension he added to our blues, and Paul was an incredible player. The crowd really appreciated him, too. It is unfortunate that he had to return to his home in Nagoya the next day.

Today was officially my first day working from home. Aside from a few minor glitches that eventually required me to cycle down to the office to borrow replacement software, things went quite smoothly. If the first day is any indication, I think I’m going to adjust to this change quite well.