When we first saw her play, backed by band, in a coffee shop in San Diego…the place was packed standing room only with several hundred people. Before she came on stage, nobody was paying attention. The audience was all chatting noisily in various groups.
When she hit the first couple notes with her voice, everyone in the audience stopped talking and turned towards her, totally transfixed. It was as if, in that moment, nothing else mattered for that audience except listening to her sing.
When she paused between songs, everyone in the audience all spontaneously appeared to turn to nearby friends and say something along the lines of: “DAMN! She’s incredible. She’s going to be a national act and were gonna be bragging to our friends that we used to see her play coffee shops in San Diego.”
It was a feeling that we were all seeing a very exceptional performer, and we were of the lucky few to see her intimate coffee shop performances before she got discovered and went national, and put San Diego coffee shops far behind her.
