Sound the trumpets, I have returned! I am back at the Coffee Company, which is under new ownership and that's not a bad thing. It has been almost FOUR YEARS since I last played here and I'm a little nervous. However, many of my friends showed up, including people I haven't seen for a really long time, and a few of my students pop in for an hour or so, so it was actually quite a good time. There was also a table of older people who seemed to be digging my more unusual lyrics and that's always cool. Many hands were shaken, many compliments given and many dollars put in the tip jar. Pretty nice.

So how old do I have to get and how many gigs do I have to play before I stop being nervous? I started with Postcard, which was probably a poor choice. It goes over huge as an opener for a crowd that knows my stuff (aka the SongFight people), but in a roomful of strangers, it's not a good choice. I like to start with it because it's easy, but I pretty much killed it. Then I did Bite Size, which has become my favorite song for the two-slot. I didn't do so well on that one either. Third was Bullseye Girl, which was better but still rough. Finally, I just started letting my friend Erik pick my songs and that seemed to work a lot better.

So what else did I play? Here's a list in no apparent order and without all the fancy italics: California, I Was Only Joking, Christina Ricci, Half a Stone, Red, New York, Good Morning, When Have I Been Wrong, Run Free, Snow Globe, Hot Lunch, On a Line, Stairway to the Moon, Evan is Getting His Teeth, The Truth About Aspartame, Thunder Storm, So Long Atticus, Pooch Quick Start, Funny Enough For You, Stuck Down a Mineshaft, Last Date, Adaptation, Is it Cold?, Tracks for Future Practice, Floating Bridge and It's Invisible. Several of those were requests, which was pretty cool.

Anyway, it was fun! It was also very hot and my arm cramped and I got blisters on my fingers, but it was still fun. I'm back there again on November 4 and expect to be even better and have at least 33% different songs.