Chi McClean

Vintage 1255 in San Luis Obispo, CA. My new favorite wine bar along the central coast!

Next on the tour stop was Vintage 1255 in San Luis Obispo, CA for Saturday evening, October 29th! I really love this joint… it’s a wonderful room with tons of cool wines, a neat vibe, great acoustics for small acts, and just truly, genuinely nice people working the bar. It was just what I needed after a noisy (but tremendously fun) night the evening prior in Capitola, CA. A number of friends, fans, and the illustrious local songwriter/promoter Steve Key from SongwritersAtPlay.com were in attendance that night and we all had a terrific time sipping wine and playing/listening to music. I played from 7:00pm until a little after 9:00pm with a short break to offer up my Taylor 814ce to Mr. Key to serenade us with some of his great songs. (While he’s not officially a “Taylor Guy”, I’m going to make one out of him, yet! His immediate comment after finishing his first tune was, “This thing plays itself! I love it!”) He made instant fans out of everyone there with a cool, seasonal (read: Halloween’ish) cover from Peter Mayer about two pumpkins debating over whether it was better to remain a pumpkin or be carved up for one night’s worth of glory to be a jack-o-lantern with eyes to see, a nose to smell, and a mouth to smile at the moon and the stars. Really cool tune. (Awesome job, Steve!)

Friend, songwriter, and local promoter Steve Key playing a couple songs during a break in my set last night!

Later on that night as I was packing up my rig, we had an interesting visitor (see photo below). I STRONGLY urged the staff at Vintage 1255 to NOT let this character in under any circumstances… fortunately for all of us, I believe, they listened to me! (Enter shrill violin sound effects from 80′s horror flicks!)

Uh... please don't let Michael Meyers in, ok? Please?

All in all, it was a tremendous night of good music, food and wine with good friends, both old and new, and some new fans from all over the place who stopped by to see what all the commotion was about at this cozy spot. The new acoustic release “A Thing Or Three” was gobbled up, I’m happy to say, and I really enjoyed being able to hand deliver a copy of the record to Steve Key and the folks from Vintage 1255 (I included their names in my “thank you” section for their continued support of my career). I suppose that I really just a had a nice, relaxing time playing my music in one of the better sounding rooms I’ve heard as of late and it was just what I needed to press the reset button after a long couple of weeks on the road. The only problem? At the end of it all, I had the sickening realization that I had to be in Sonoma, CA (about 6 hours away) by 12:00pm the next day and it was about 10:30pm or so before I ended up finally finishing loading my truck! Ack! Who’s my booking manager?! Fire that guy! (Oh, wait… it’s ME! Oops… )