I was totally ready for the level of suck I was about to achieve. I was woefully underprepared, not having mastered the words nor the chords to my songs. I showed up with my trusty book (of words and chords) and proceeded to sound like crap. Here's how it went down.

After setting up my sound equipment, I attempted to get a decent sound in this place, which is long and narrow and completely evil in terms of music production. I decided to play the John Benjamin Band's "Tracks For Future Practice" during sound check. It blew. Everything went downhill from there.

But alas, I had a plan. I openly admitted to the crowd (almost all of whom are personal friends and/or students) that I would probably be sucking this evening. They laughed, not realizing that I was being serious. "But as a consolation for sitting through my horrendous debut," I added, "I offer you this: for each song-stopping mistake I make, everyone in the house gets a Tootsie Roll!" The crowd rejoiced.

And so it went. I played songs, I made mistakes, we passed the bowl of Tootsie Rolls around and everyone was happy. Until some fat kid said "We're getting kind of full." Stupid fat kid.