Bouncer Shaky, Emily, Quique and Kariné. November 20, 2006 10:12pm

It's 10:29am on Tuesday as I type these words. Good news: last night was a blast at Citron. Bad news: no pics from the show. Good reason for no pics: my volunteer photographer was so taken in by the show that she forgot to take pics. Hehe....good answer!

Our singer Gerard had important business to take care of last night, so in his place I got a second dancer for the show. Guess who? Yeah, I called Samantha again. And once again she came through for me at the last minute--I called her at 4pm-ish and the show was at 8pm!

So besides myself, Samantha and Mariya, Jason kindly offered his inspiring musical assistance with the cajón. I cranked up the volume for the audience on this surprisingly crowded Monday here at Citron. They responded enthusiastically which made Samantha's first time to perform here even more inspiring. At one of the seats near the stage, I even heard a guy tell his friend, "I didn't know they had flamenco here. This is sooo cool!"

Later, I got a text message from one of my flamenco friends telling me she and two others were on their way, so I postponed the second set until 9:30pm (normally we start a little after 9:00pm) and we started off with a mini Sevillanas fest giving each of our friends and chance to dance a copla.

Jason sang a few letras for Mariya's alegrías. I didn't bring a mic stand so I had Jason sit next to me and sing into my guitar microphone. It worked! Plus, I had to reposition my chair and it turned out I had a better view of Samantha as she performed her tangos. This time I could see through her facial expression that she was really getting into the music, the palmas, the jaleo, the energy of the crowd, the overall ambience and just having a great time which is a very important thing to do as a performer. Too often we get so overwhelmed about performing "perfectly" that we forget to let go, at least a little bit, and just have fun. Trust me on this. The audience does notice and they truly want to see you having a good time.

Anywayz, the rest o' the pics are just random shots of a few of the many friends that came out to support our show...