Day 158 - Troy Walker - 10.26.11

What a great evening I had going to Viva Cantina here in Burbank to catch Troy Walker for his Halloween show. I had never seen Troy before, but learned this evening from several of the regulars that Troy is a bit of an institution. He's been performing at Viva Cantina on Wednesdays for about the last year, but he's been performing since the 60's. He puts on a great show. He entertained the room singing hit after hit, interlaced with jokes and banter with the audience. The crowd was great as well. It was made up of folks mostly 50 years and older with many women who would get up and dance when the music called for it.

At one point a fuse of something was blown and part of the stage when dark and some of the instruments went out. However the crowd saw this as a chance to start singing along and get up and dance. A couple women got on the bar and danced along. It was pretty crazy.

I talked to a few people at the show who were regulars and it was interesting to hear their impressions of the show. I apologize for the name dropping in advance. Tom Kenny was there and he's a huge fan. He told me that this was a particularly great show, really wild. But then Jonny Whiteside and Donna Lethal who also are huge fans and regulars told me that Troy was having and off night and that on other nights he has moved them to tears. So I guess I definitely have to go again to compare performances. All I know is I had a great time.

As a side note Jonny has been a huge fan for a long time and he wrote a piece on Troy a while back. Read it here.

One other particularly interesting moment was that before Troy came back for the second half of the show. I should mention that he first came out in in the costume you see above and performed for about an hour. Then he took a break and came back in some sort of Guido mobster outfit and performed another hour. Well, when the band came back for part two they jumped into an quick instrumental of Black Sabbath's Iron Man. That was great, but the interesting part was when the older woman in her 60's and possible 70's began rocking out bobbing her head to the music. Nothing like grandma rocking to Sabbath. Too bad I didn't get a photo of that.

I did catch this nice one of Troy in his first costume. He actually had a turban on when he first came out, but he lost it by this point in the show. This was something I saw today.