the WALKING WILLOWS at the Doe Bay Cafe on Orcas Island, Washington

The WALKING WILLOWS took a ferry to the San Juan Islands in early October and performed at the Doe Bay Cafe on a Friday night at the beautiful Doe Bay Resort. We then stayed for the weekend and worked on new compositions in a cabin that the resort provided for us. While trying things out on a new guitar piece I presented, Rich had a musical breakthrough of sorts, coming up with haunting sounds on the upper registers of the double bass that he had not explored before (and perhaps sounds few others, if any,  have explored).

The Doe Bay Cafe has fantastic food, using local ingredients including produce from the Doe Bay Resort garden. This was different for us, playing in a restaurant situation with people eating and talking, different from the concert situations I have been playing pretty much exclusively for the last 20 years. It did however turn out to be a good experience for us, and there were nice, interesting people both working and eating there. We even met Doe Bay Joe. This all reminded me a little bit of the experiences I had at a restaurant I used to play many years ago in Newport, Oregon, the Whale's Tale.

We were done playing, unplugged, and waiting for our dinner when a couple asked us if we could play them one more song. I decided to oblige them, picked up my guitar, walked over to their table and serenaded them with one more song  ("I woke up this morning, woke up this morning, woke up this morning and went back to sleep").