First Show at Coco Roco!

Our first show at Coco Roco was truly a family affair. Unfortunately, there were only 2 families in the place! (badum-CHING!)

It was our whole family (grandparents, nephews, brother, sister-in-law, and of course kids) and the family of the person in charge of booking at Coco Roco who essentially saved the day. Everyone was great and enthusiastic but it was a bit of a let down after our show at the Bibliobus.

The most difficult thing was the kids had not napped and Kylen woke up as we started the show so we had two crying kids on our hands as the show started. We did our HOLA with both kids in our arms along with the mics. Fati managed to do all the dance steps anyway. I suppose we started this way at Prospect Park last year too and each week we had a few more families.

Everyone at Coco Roco was very nice and we're looking forward to seeing what happens next week. My family had a delicious lunch while watching us!

Amazing Kids at the Bibliobús in Sunset Park

Despite the fact that kids are supposed to be asleep at two in the afternoon, and that it was supposed to rain, and that we didn't have Kylen to support us, we had a fantastic show in Sunset Park at the Bibliobús!

The kids that assembled for our show seemed like they were trying out to be permanent dancers in our show or something. They were amazing! They had their eyes fixed on us watching and copying every move, singing every chorus when we thrust the microphone at us, and I got so many high fives my hand started hurting a little bit.

Looking for the Esponja

Was it that the kids were older? Were Fati and I just totally awesome that day? I'm not sure what it was that got the kids so engaged but many of them stuck with us throughout the entire show which I feel is a minor miracle. We got our first mention in a blog which was also very exciting! It's on a really neat Sunset Park blog called Best View in Brooklyn. Here's the link.

Explaining the merits of Paco

Kylen, Chloe and my nephew Vincent showed up as the show was winding down and we spent a few hours enjoying Sunset Park. What a nice day!

A Show for Kylen

Saturday was a difficult morning. When we got up, Chloe was complaining of a pain in her front (forehead) and seemed totally listless and a bit feverish. We had just dealt with a 24 hour fever from Kylen earlier in the week so we felt a bit weak about heading off to play a show in Sunset Park.

But the show must go on!

We dumped Chloe in a stroller, fed her some medicine on the way, and amazing arrived on time at the Sunset Park Greenmarket. Chloe promptly passed out pretty comfortably in the stroller and remained that way for the entire show.

Chloe was down for the count.

The Sunset Park Greenmarket is very nice. It's set up along the playground and track of a school so it's just along the sidewalk. We started our show and at various times we had quite a few kids and parents listening to our show. But if the crowd got too big, no one could walk on the sidewalk so our audience kept shifting and growing and shrinking throughout our songs.

Kylen warming up the crowd.

The one constant, there for every song, dancing and even helping us get out the props was Kylen. He didn't care if he was at times the only kid up there doing the steps. He kept us company and was our audience member. He slapped five, hugged Teo, woke me up after La Pulga, and waved, kicked and shook his butt during our Chau song.


He was awesome. I don't think I'll ever question having the kids with us at another show. Kylen made this show really special for us.

Ossining

No we didn't play at Sing Sing. We played at the block party of the Cavalry Church where a friend of Fati's is a member. We had our first groupie, my nephew Vincent along with us and the kids.

When it got about time for us to play and there we're many kids around, Fati went off with the kids and managed to round up some families! She's amazing.

The show turned out to be really fun especially because the sound system was incredible. It's fun hearing our music and voices blasted into the world. We got a lot of smiles and hand clapping from the adults sitting and a lot of dancing and high fives from the kids participating.

We spent the rest of the afternoon getting face painted and playing catch and hacky sack.

The kids all drifted off on the way home from a really nice day Upstate.

A Break!

Incredibly, since our first CD Release Party in June, we've been playing shows pretty much every weekend. It's sort of a nice break to not have a show to worry about or prepare for. But we did go to my niece's birthday on July 4th and spent a wonderful day in our beloved Prospect Park eating, playing and flying kites.

Mulberry Library

Each show we've played so far usually has some little special element that makes it memorable and fun for us. Our show at the Mulberry Library was made memorable by the appearance of our friends racing in from Rhode Island and arriving at our show just as we were starting and by me somehow finding parking and walking about 10 blocks with the kids to get to the library.

Susie, the children's librarian, had done a great job of spreading the word about our show and the room was pretty full. There were a lot of little kids and even babies checking out our equipment and checking us out. Chloe and Kylen performed the sound check and we were ready to start.

The parents, caregivers, babies and toddlers all seemed to pay attention and got pretty excited by our music. It seemed a little weird to be dancing and singing so loud in a library but the door was closed I guess and we were having fun.

Having our friends and their 3 kids there with our kids made it a very fun and special show. As I ran to our car to feed the meter and found that I hadn't gotten a ticket, I thought that we were really lucky.