Headliners!

So it's come to this. Somehow, Mike Sugerman and I have become a headline act. I don't mean the whole band, just Mike and me.

Careful listeners will have noticed that Sug and I are the least-talented members of the Eyewitness Blues Band. But everyone else is working or traveling, so, somehow, Mike and I are going to try to perform.

It's a good cause: we're trying to help raise money to keep elementary school music programs alive in Alameda. I managed to finagle San Francisco Chronicle whiz Steve Rubenstein into joining us to play harmonica. But that leaves us a drummer, a bassist, and a lead guitarist shy of a real band.

Not to worry, said the organizers. We'll provide you guys with our house band!

Great, except that means I have to explain our songs to real musicians. When it comes to speaking "music", I'm about on the level of a guy scanning his Japanese phrasebook while trying to communicate in Tokyo.

We will meet the "house band" for the first time a few hours before the show begins. We'll see if we can communicate musically well enough to make it work. I have this scary feeling that they'll look at us and say, "You posers! Put down those instruments right now!"

One good thing: we're playing our two songs very early in the show. If it goes badly, everyone will have forgotten by the time the curtain falls.